28 MARCH 1891, Page 2

There appears to be ground for doubting whether the Talleyrand.

Memoirs are authentic. The Duo de Broglie, who edits them, is incapable either of forging or condoning a, forgery; but he did not receive the manuscripts from M. de Talleyrand'a assigns, but from MM. Audral and Chatelain,. to whom they were entrusted from 1865 to 1889. The theory is, that these gentlemen, finding that the Memoirs contained, grave scandals against the Orleans family, allowed them to be suppressed, and false Memoirs substituted. Before 1865 they were in the custody of M. de Bacourt, whose grandniece, the Conitesse de Martel, copied them, and now declares that the published Memoir is wholly unlike her recollection. Certainly the Memoir is most unlike Talleyrand's usual literary form ; but there must exist means of clearing up all doubt. Where is the original manuscript, which no one can have had any right to destroy ? If the Duo de Broglie possesses it, that is final ; but if not, what has become of a document which the Prince himself said would fill fifteen volumes, but which only fills four ? The Duc de Broglie, as we understand the statements, does not settle this question, but only asserts, what everybody believes, that he publishes the manuscript as he received it, and that no manuscript in M. de Talleyrand's handwriting need exist, because he usually dictated. But where is the slictated one P