Talleyrand’s hold over Napoleon
“De Napoleon” is a strange book by an eccentric French writer, André Suarès. He apparently hated Napoleon but the book is so beautifully written that I like it. He wrote another book about Napoleon but it’s not in the public domain. Here is an excerpt translated by me/google.
Irony is the king's counterfeit currency. It is the negation of value. This is why Napoleon never ceased to hate Talleyrand, without managing to do without him. Talleyrand was his weakness, his vice, his silk stockings, his perverted taste, his only taste for the West. Talleyrand irritated and tempted him beginning with his name, which he could not pronounce as it is written: “Taillerand,” he said.
What would Napoleon not have given to crush this prince of corruption, or to inspire him with a little of his sound conscience? But the icy intelligence of the accursed cripple escaped reproach: this spirit remained incorruptible in all the putrefactions of action and morals. He even escaped contempt through the superior contempt of the skeptic and the consummate egoist. He blunted the violence of the tyrant by the impassive mask which he opposed to offenses; and he was stronger than the threat, stronger than the blows, putting between them and him the cruel distance of irony, and the infinite estrangement of a politeness which was never found wanting, and which never delivers anything of itself.
At all hours, Napoleon, disconcerted, lost his footing before Talleyrand; and growling against him, he was seduced, frightened perhaps by this demon of secret irony. At all hours, he was astonished with rage to suffer its presence, and not to have yet annihilated it.
De Napoleon by André Suarès, 1912
