Louis deeply resented this conduct of his Foreign Minister, and when Talleyrand at last joined him with all his doubts resolved, the King took the first opportunity of dismissing him, leaving the calm Talleyrand for once stuttering with rage.  Louis soon, however, found that he was not the free agent he believed.  The Allies did not want to have to again replace their puppet on the throne, and they looked on Talleyrand and Fouche as the two necessary men.  Talleyrand was reinstated immediately, and remained for some time at the head of the Ministry.  He was, however, not the man for Parliamentary Government, being too careless in business, and trying to gain his ends more by clever tricks than straightforward measures.  As for the state into which he let the Government fall, it was happily characterised by M. Beugnot.  “Until now,” said he, “we have only known three sorts of governments—­the Monarchical, the Aristocratic, and the Republican.  Now we have invented a new one, which has never been heard of before,—­Paternal Anarchy.”

In September 1815 the elections to the Chamber were bringing in deputies more Royalist than the King, and Talleyrand sought to gain popularity by throwing over Fouche.  To his horror it appeared that, well contented with this step, the deputies next asked when the former Bishop was to be dismissed.  Taking advantage of what Talleyrand conceived to be a happy way of eliciting a strong expression of royal support by threatening to resign, the King replaced him by the Duc de Richelieu.  It was well to cut jokes at the Duke and say that he was the man in France who knew most of the Crimea (the Duke had been long in the Russian service, with the approval of Napoleon), but Talleyrand was overwhelmed.  He received the same office at Court which he had held under Napoleon, Grand Chamberlain, and afterwards remained a sardonic spectator of events, a not unimposing figure attending at the Court ceremonials and at the heavy dinners of the King, and probably lending a helping hand in 1830 to oust Charles X. from the throne.  The Monarchy of July sent him as Ambassador to England, where he mixed in local politics, for example, plotting against Lord Palmerston, whose brusque manners he disliked; and in 1838 he ended his strange life with some dignity, having, as one of his eulogists puts it, been faithful to every Government he had served as long as it was possible to save them.

With the darker side of Talleyrand’s character we have nothing to do here; it is sufficient for our purposes to say that the part the leading statesman of France took during the Cent Tours was simply nil.  In 1814, he had let the reins slip through his hands; 1815 he could only follow the King, who even refused to adopt his advice as to the proper way in which to return to France, and though he once more became Chief Minister, Talleyrand, like Louis XVIII., owed his restoration in 1815 solely to the Allies.