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Victor Hugo (1802-1885). The End of Talleyrand's Brain. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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Victor Hugo (1802-1885). The End of Talleyrand's Brain. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. The End of Talleyrand’s Brain
By Victor Hugo (1802–1885) Complete. From “Things Seen.”

IN the Rue Saint-Florentin there are a palace and a sewer.

1   The palace, which is of a rich, handsome, and gloomy style of architecture, was long called Hotel de l’Infantado; nowadays may be seen on the frontal of its principal doorway Hotel Talleyrand. During the forty years that he resided in this street, the last tenant of this palace never, perhaps, cast his eyes upon this sewer.

2   He was a strange, redoubtable, and important personage; his name was Charles Maurice de Perigord; he was of noble descent like Machiavelli, a priest like Gondi, unfrocked like Fouché, witty like Voltaire, and lame like the devil. It might be averred that everything in him was lame like himself; the nobility which he had placed at the service of the Republic, the priesthood which he had dragged through the parade ground, then cast into the gutter, the marriage which he had broken off through a score of exposures and a voluntary separation, the understanding which he disgraced by acts of baseness.

3   This man, nevertheless, had grandeur; the splendors of the two régimes were united in him; he was Prince de Vaux in the kingdom of France, and a Prince of the French Empire. During thirty years, from the interior of his palace, from the interior of his thoughts, he had almost controlled Europe. He had permitted himself to be on terms of familiarity with the Revolution, and had smiled upon it; ironically, it is true, but the Revolution had not perceived this. He had come in contact with, known, observed, penetrated, influenced, set in motion, fathomed, bantered, inspired all the men of his time, all the ideas of his time, and there had been moments in his life when, holding in his hand the four or five great threads which moved the civilized universe, he had for his puppet Napoleon I., Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation. That is the game which was played by this man.

4   After the Revolution of July, the old race, of which he was the high chamberlain, having fallen, he found himself once more on his feet, and said to the people of 1830, seated bare-armed upon a heap of paving stones, “Make me your embassador!”

5   He received the confession of Mirabeau and the first confidence of Thiers. He said of himself that he was a great poet, and that he had composed a trilogy in three dynasties: Act I., the Empire of Bonaparte; Act II., the House of Bourbon; Act III., the House of Orleans.

6   He did all this in his palace, and in this palace, like a spider in his web, he allured and caught in succession, heroes, thinkers, great men, conquerors, kings, princes, emperors, Bonaparte, Sieyès, Madame de Stael, Châteaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Alexander of Russia, William of Prussia, Francis of Austria, Louis XVIII., Louis Philippe, all the gilded and glittering flies who buzz through the history of the last forty years. All this glistening throng, fascinated by the penetrating eye of this man, passed in turn under that gloomy entrance bearing upon the architrave the inscription Hotel Talleyrand.

7   Well, the day before yesterday, May 17th, 1838, this man died. Doctors came and embalmed the body. To do this they, like the Egyptians, removed the bowels from the stomach and the brain from the skull. The work done, after having transformed the Prince de Talleyrand into a mummy, and nailed down this mummy in a coffin, lined with white satin, they retired leaving upon a table the brain—that brain which had thought so many things, inspired so many men, erected so many buildings, led two revolutions, duped twenty kings, held the world. The doctors being gone, a servant entered; he saw what they had left; Hulloa! they have forgotten this. What was to be done with it? It occurred to him that there was a sewer in the street; he went there, and threw the brain into the sewer.

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