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last day of March, 1814. His Majesty occupied the first floor; M. de Talleyrand, the _rez de chaussee_. He was then no more than ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs; neither empowered by the Bourbons to treat for the Restoration, nor by the nation for the conditions of a government--he was merely "one among the conquered;" and yet to this man all eyes were turned instinctively, as to one who possessed the secret of the future. That _rez de chaussee_ was besieged with visitors from morning till night; and even when, according to the custom of the French, he made his lengthened toilette, his dressing-room was filled by all the foreign ministers of the conquering monarchs, and Nesselrode and Metternich waited at these daily levees. In all these discussions M. de Talleyrand took the lead, with the same ease and the same "_aplomb_" discussing kings to make and kingdoms to dismember, as though the clank of the muskets, which now and then interrupted their colloquy, came from the Imperial Guard of Napoleon, and not the Cossacks of the Don and the Uhlans of the Danube, who crowded the stairs and the avenues, and bivouacked in the court. Here the Restoration was decided upon, and Talleyrand himself it was who decided it. The Emperor Alexander opposed it strongly at first, alleging that the old spirit and the old antipathies would all return with the elder Bourbons, and suggesting the Duc d'Orleans as king. Talleyrand, however, overruled the objection, asserting that no new agent must be had recourse to for governing at such a juncture, and that one usurpation could not be succeeded by another. It is said that when the news reached Vienna, in 1815, that Napoleon had landed from Elba, the Emperor Alexander came hurriedly over to where Talleyrand was sitting, and informing him what had occurred, said, "I told you before your plan would be a failure!" "_Mais que faire?_" coolly retorted the calm _diplomate_; "of two evil courses it was the better--I never said more of it. Had you proclaimed the King of Rome, you had been merely maintaining the power of Napoleon under another name. You cannot establish the government of a great nation upon a half-measure. Besides that, Legitimacy, whatever its faults, was the only Principle that could prove to Europe at large that France and Napoleon were parted for ever; and, after so many barterings of crowns and trucklings of kingdoms, it was a fine opportunity of shewing that there was still someth
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