was, not whether the victors were in the right, but whether it was better to join with those who had conquered, or with those who had been conquered.
In such a condition of things M. de Talleyrand rarely hesitated. He took his side with the law against the church, and with those who were daily becoming more powerful, against those who were daily becoming more feeble; and having once taken a step of this kind, it was never his custom to do so timidly.
He at once took the required oath, which all his episcopal brethren – with the notorious and not very creditable exceptions of the Bishops of Babylon and Lydia, whose titles were purely honorary – refused to take. He also justified this course in a letter to the clergy of his own department, and ultimately undertook to consecrate the new bishops who were elected to supply the place of those whom the Assembly had deprived of their dioceses.
We shall presently see the results of this conduct. But it may be as well at once to state, that although M. de Talleyrand accepted for himself those new regulations for his church which the State, in spite of the head of his church, had established, and took an oath to obey them without unwillingness, and although he even maintained that the State, considering the clergy as public functionaries enjoying a salary in return for the performance of public duties, might deprive any members of the clergy of such salary if they would not submit to the laws of the government which paid and employed them; he nevertheless contended, boldly and consistently and at all times, that all ecclesiastics thus dispossessed would have a right to the pension which, at the time of confiscating the church property, had been granted to any ecclesiastic whom the suppression of religious establishments or of useless benefices left without income or employment; a principle at first accepted as just, but soon condemned as inexpedient; for there is no compromise between parties when one is conscientiously disposed to resist what it deems an act of injustice, and the other resolutely determined to crush what it deems a selfish opposition.
Amidst the various vacancies which were occasioned by the refusal of the high dignitaries of the church to take the oath which the Constitution now exacted from them, was that of the archbishopric of Paris; and as it was known that M. de Talleyrand could be elected for this post if he so desired it, the public imagined that he intended to take advantage of his popularity and obtain what, up to that period, had been so honourable and important a position. In consequence of this belief a portion of the press extolled his virtues; whilst another painted and, as usual in such cases, exaggerated his vices.
M. de Talleyrand was, up to the last hour of his life, almost indifferent to praise, but singularly enough (considering his long and varied career), exquisitely sensitive to censure; and his susceptibility on this occasion so far got the better of his caution, as to induce him to write and publish a letter in the Moniteur, of Paris, February 8th, 1791.
“Gentlemen,
“I have just read in your paper that you have been good enough to name me as a candidate for the archbishopric of Paris. I cannot but feel myself highly flattered by this nomination: some of the electors have in fact given me to understand that they would be happy to see me occupy the post to which you have alluded, and I, therefore, consider that I ought to publish my reply. No, gentlemen, I shall not accept the honour of which my fellow-citizens are so obliging as to think me worthy.
“Since the existence of the National Assembly, I may have appeared indifferent to the innumerable calumnies in which different parties have indulged themselves at my expense. Never have I made, nor ever shall I make, to my calumniators the sacrifice of one single opinion or one single action which seems to me beneficial to the commonwealth: but I can and will make the sacrifice of my personal advantage, and on this occasion alone my enemies will have influenced my conduct. I will not give them the power to say that a secret motive caused me to take the oath I have recently sworn. I will not allow them the opportunity of weakening the good which I have endeavoured to effect.
“That publicity which I give to the determination I now announce, I gave to my wishes when I stated how much I should be flattered at becoming one of the administrators of the department of Paris. In a free state, the people of which have repossessed themselves of the right of election —i. e. the true exercise of their sovereignty – I deem that to declare openly the post to which we aspire, is to invite our fellow-citizens to examine our claims before deciding upon them, and to deprive our pretensions of all possibility of benefiting by intrigue. We present ourselves in this way to the observations of the impartial, and give even the prejudiced and the hostile the opportunity to do their worst.
“I beg then to assure those who, dreading what they term my ambition, never cease their slanders against my reputation, that I will never disguise the object to which I have the ambition to pretend.
“Owing, I presume, to the false alarm caused by my supposed pretensions to the see of Paris, stories have been circulated of my having lately won in gambling houses the sum of sixty or seventy thousand francs. Now that all fear of seeing me elevated to the dignity in question is at an end, I shall doubtless be believed in what I am about to say. The truth is, that, in the course of two months, I gained the sum of about thirty thousand francs, not at gambling houses, but in private society, or at the chess-club, which has always been regarded, from the nature of its institution, as a private house.
“I here state the facts without attempting to justify them. The passion for play has spread to a troublesome extent. I never had a taste for it, and reproach myself the more for not having resisted its allurements. I blame myself as a private individual, and still more as a legislator who believes that the virtues of liberty are as severe as her principles: that a regenerated people ought to regain all the austerity of morality, and that the National Assembly ought to be directed towards this vice as one prejudicial to society, inasmuch as it contributes towards that inequality of fortune which the laws should endeavour to prevent by every means which do not interfere with the eternal basis of social justice, viz., the respect for property.
“You see I condemn myself. I feel a pleasure in confessing it; for since the reign of truth has arrived, in renouncing the impossible honour of being faultless, the most noble manner we can adopt of repairing our errors is to have the courage to acknowledge them.
From this document we learn that the Bishop of Autun, notwithstanding his labours in the Assembly, was still a gay frequenter of the world: to be found pretty frequently at the chess-club, as well as in private society; and, though he lamented over the fact, a winner at such places of thirty thousand francs within two months. We also learn that he abandoned at this moment the idea of professional advancement, in order to maintain unimpeached the motives of his political conduct; and we may divine that he looked for the future rather to civil than to ecclesiastical preferment.
The most striking portion of this document, however, is the tone and style – I may almost say the cant – which prevails towards its conclusion. But every epoch has its pretensions: and that of the period which intervened between May, 1789, and August, 1792, was to decorate the easy life of a dissolute man of fashion with the pure language of a saint, or the stern precepts of a philosopher. “Le dire,” says old Montaigne, “est autre chose que le faire: il faut considérer le prêche à part, et le prêcheur à part.”17
And now, or but a little after this time, might have been seen an agitated crowd, weeping, questioning, and rushing towards a house in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. It was in the first days of April, and in that house – receiving through the open windows the balmy air which for a moment refreshed his burning forehead, and welcoming yet more gratefully the anxious voice of the inquiring multitude – lay the dying Mirabeau, about to carry into the tomb all the remaining wisdom and moderation of the people; and, as he himself sadly and proudly added, all the
“Saying is quite a different thing from doing: the preaching and the preacher must be considered apart.”
