EXTRACTS FROM MEMOIRS OF TALLEYRAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8306, 12 July 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

EXTRACTS FROM MEMOIRS OF TALLEYRAND.

A MERCILESS ESTIMATE OF NAPOLEON. London, May L , !).—M. deßlowitz, the Paris correspondent of the London Times, has sent to his paper a number of extracts from the memoirs of Prince Talleyrand, accompanied by some interesting comments on him. He says that the vividness of the memoirs is so great as to make one almost a spectator of the events which arc recorded and described by that keen and satirical observer. Talleyrand, says Do Blowitz, avoids dryness in the rehearsal of incidents and their causes and effects, and puts throughout his writing a sprinkling of acute, sarcastic sketches of the personages with whom ho came in contact in his busy diplomatic career and Court lifo. An instance of this kind is his reference to the famous Duchess du Harry, Of her he says she was superior to tho debased methods by which she had attained success. The memoirs are in twelve parts and altogether cover the period extending from the time of his childhood to 1830, when Talleyrand was sent on his diplomatic mission to London, after the revolution of July, which was live yoars before his retirement and eight before his death. They depict in the most lifelike fashion French society of his period, through its various changes, which he followed with every change of dynasty with persistent attachment to the party in power, He deals. more with tho original causes of tho revolution than with the revolution itself, writing as one behind the scenes and partly ignoring the effects which were visible to all men. With regard to himself, ho declares that he conspired against the empire in ISII, the downfall of which ho prophesied early, only when ho was sure that he had a majority of the French people as his accomplices, and when ho believed that upon such a conspiracy depended the salvation of b'ranco. Of his rupture with Napoleon, Talleyrand says : " I am justified in my own conscience. I "took no atock in his policy at lirst, nor did 1 afterward in the man himself, when Ik* put in peril the future of my country. ,. His linal judgment of Nap.'icon is as follows : " lie was a man of great intellectual force, but he did not comprehend true glory. His moral strength was little or nothing." M, do Blowitz avows that his object in making these extracts public is to compel the. publication of Talleyrand's personal memoirs in full. His quotations are given entirely from memory, and lit: says that he is enabled to do this beeau.-e. at the instigntion of M. Thiers, ho had succeeded in reading the original manuscript. Ho threatens to publish further extracts, and some bearing strongly on personal matters, unless the book appears soon, Talleyrand himself in his will stipulated that these memoirs were not to bo made public until thirty years after hi* death. At the expiration of that time, in I Sfjs, Napoleo.i 111. indued the groat diplomatist's heirs to agree to a tun her postponement of twenty-two years, which have now expired. This is the incentive; of tho Times correspondent in his present conduct, and it remains to be seen win ther the present heirs will refuse to pul>li-h tiio, memoirs as the lato I> ike do Montmorency did in IS7while the pledge to the Emperor was still in force.