I began to understand as I listened to him that my friends in England had not been so far wrong when they had declared that as long as he lived—­this little thirty-six year old artilleryman—­there could not possibly be any peace in the world.  He drank some coffee which Constant had placed upon the small round table at his elbow.  Then he leaned back in his chair once more, still staring moodily at the red glow of the fire, with his chin sunk upon his chest.

‘In those days,’ said he, ’the kings of Europe will walk behind the Emperor of France in order to hold up his train at his coronation.  Each of them will have to maintain a palace in Paris, and the city will stretch as far as Versailles.  These are the plans which I have made for Paris if she will show herself to be worthy of them.  But I have no love for them, these Parisians, and they have none for me, for they cannot forget that I turned my guns upon them once before, and they know that I am ready to do so again.  I have made them admire me and fear me, but I have never made them like me.  Look what I have done for them.  Where are the treasures of Genoa, the pictures and statues of Venice and of the Vatican?  They are in the Louvre.  The spoils of my victories have gone to decorate her.  But they must always be changing, always chattering.  They wave their hats at me now, but they would soon be waving their fists if I did not give them something to talk over and to wonder at.  When other things are quiet, I have the dome of the Invalides regilded to keep their thoughts from mischief.  Louis XIV. gave them wars.  Louis XV. gave them the gallantries and scandals of his Court.  Louis XVI. gave them nothing, so they cut off his head.  It was you who helped to bring him to the scaffold, Talleyrand.’

‘No, Sire, I was always a moderate.’

‘At least, you did not regret his death.’

’The less so, since it has made room for you,
Sire.’

’Nothing could have held me down, Talleyrand.  I was born to reach the highest.  It has always been the same with me.  I remember when we were arranging the Treaty of Campo Formio—­I a young general under thirty—­there was a high vacant throne with the Imperial arms in the Commissioner’s tent.  I instantly sprang up the steps, and threw myself down upon it.  I could not endure to think that there was anything above myself.  And all the time I knew in my heart all that was going to happen to me.  Even in the days when my brother Lucien and I lived in a little room upon a few francs a week, I knew perfectly well that the day would come when I should stand where I am now.  And yet I had no prospects and no reason for any great hopes.  I was not clever at school.  I was only the forty-second out of fifty-eight.  At mathematics I had perhaps some ability, but at nothing else.  The truth is that I was always dreaming when the others were working.  There was nothing to encourage my ambition,