New Hampshire Statesman And State Journal

SKETCH OF A POLITICIAN,

Talleyrand is certainly the most extraordinary being of his kind the world has produced since the first creation. Take him in his physical conformation alone, and think of his having outlived so long (he is now eighty-five) all the great and good of his time. Talleyrand was born lame, and his limbs are fastened to his trunk by an iron apparatus, on which he strikes ever and anon his gigantic cane, to the great dismay of those who see him for the first time—an awe not diminished by the look of his piercing gray eyes, peering through his shaggy eyebrows; his unearthly face, marked with deep stains, covered partly by his stock of extraordinary hair, parted by his enormous cravat, which supports a large protruding lip, drawn over his upper lip with a cynical expression no painting could render. Add to this apparatus of terror his dead silence; broken occasionally by the most sepulchral guttural monosyllables.

Talleyrand's pulse, which rolls a stream of enormous volume, intermits and pauses at every sixth beat. This he constantly points out triumphantly as a rest of nature, giving him at once a superiority over other men. Thus, he says, all the missing pulsations are added to the sum total of those of his life, and his longevity and strength appear to support this extraordinary theory. He likewise asserts that it is this which enables him to do without sleep. "Nature," says he, "sleeps and recruits herself at every intermission of my pulse." And indeed, you see him time after time rise at 3 o'clock in the morning, from the whist table; then will he return home, and often wake up one of his secretaries to keep him company or talk of business. At four he will go to bed, sitting nearly bolt upright in his bed, with innumerable night caps, on his head, to keep it warm, as he says, and feed his intellect with blood, but in fact it is to prevent his injuring the seat of knowledge if he tumble on the ground; and he sits upright from his tendency to apoplexy, which would no doubt seize him if he were perfectly recumbent.

We may remember the newspapers stating he was found a few years ago, his head having dropped from his pillow, so drowned in blood that no feature was to be seen. Although he goes to bed so late, at six or seven at latest he wakes, and sends for his attendants. He constantly refers to the period when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs, and when this power to live without sleep enabled him to go out and seek information as well as pleasure, in society till twelve or one o'clock. At that hour he returned to his office, read over all the letters that had arrived in the day, put marginal indications of the answers to be returned, and then, on waking again at six, read over all the letters written in consequence of his orders. When Talleyrand was engaged in the protocols here, he used to tire out all his younger colleagues; and full well we know now by experience, that at the time of the Quadruple Treaty, and on many other occasions, his eyes were open whilst Lord Palmerston slept. To these physical peculiarities we could add that he eats but one meal a day. After serving his guests, which he always insists on doing, he gulps down dish after dish, a volume altogether that would satisfy a boa constrictor.—Paris Correspondence of the London Morning Post.