Charles-Maurice Talleyrand had an abysmal reputation. Though his ancestors had been court favorites ever since the Capetian dynasty was founded in the tenth century, and by blood his father, Count Talleyrand, was a cousin of King Louis XVI, he possessed not the slightest aristocratic bearing and did not lump himself together with the old nobility.
He was greedy and despicable, nothing like a clergyman. Yet it was this very man who stood up in the Constituent Assembly to support the state's right to reclaim church property. The people of Paris were deeply moved by Bishop Talleyrand's "spirit of self-sacrifice," while the Pope and the nobles hated him bitterly. The Pope in Rome excommunicated this "revolutionary bishop," but Talleyrand turned a deaf ear and continued his religious activities.
It was not until 1791, when he felt that his role as bishop could bring him no further benefits, that he voluntarily cast aside the black cassock he had long grown sick of and changed into the elegant attire of a secular nobleman.
Even so, he had attained his present position through his own ability rather than through women. Madame de Pompadour had also introduced Voltaire and others to Louis XV, but society generally still looked down on men promoted through women. Even when Bonaparte first became commander-in-chief in Italy, people mocked him for "winning the command through his bride."
Talleyrand loved speculation. After learning that Napoleon had returned from Egypt, he bought government bonds, then sold them after the coup. At the time, Directory bonds had fallen to eleven francs; after the coup, they rose to fifty-three francs, and Talleyrand made another killing.
The group that followed Napoleon back from Egypt to take part in the Coup of 18 Brumaire were considered by Bonaparte to be utterly loyal. They could be called