A Hundred Years Ago
THE " SPECTATOR," NOVEMBER 28TH, 1829. TALLEYRAND.
On a rumour of the death of George the Third, when Talleyrand was Minister for Foreign Affairs, a great speculator in the funds requested an audience. His motive was divined : the death of the King was likely to affect the funds, and he wished for accurate information. Talleyrand, with imperturbable gravity, told him that some said he was dead—iithers said he was not, but that for his part he neither believed one nor the other : " I tell you this in confidence, but be sure not to quote me."
We presume that his art of talking a great deal without saying anything, to which Napoleon bears testimony, was not quite so gross as this specimen of mystification : the Emperor, however, on the report of O'Meara, used to say that his slipperiness was mar- vellous, and that after sending for him to obtain a specific com- munication, he used to be astonished, after he was gone, on finding how little he had got out of him.
On one occasion, when some secret project had been betrayed to the Spanish Ambassador D'Azara, Talleyrand devised the means of nullifying the effect of the communication : he ordered his carriage, and went and confided the whole plan to the Ambassador himself, as a mark of his confidential friendship. D'Azara immediately wrote home to say he had been deceived : he was sure no such plan was in agitation.
Talleyrand's countenance so rarely affords the slightest indication of what is passing in his mind, that Lannes and Murat used to say, that were he to receive a kick in the posteriors, there would be no mark of it in the face.
At the abdication of Napoleon, great indignation was expressed at the conduct of a certain marshal, who was said to have set the example of desertion. " Oh ! mon Dieu," said the Prince, " what does all that prove 1—only that his watch was a little too forward ; for all the rest of the world were exact to the hour."
A CAPACIOUS CASK.
On Monday se'nnight, a party of friends at Leighton Buzzard
partook of an excellent dinner, and spent the afternoon pleasantly together in a large cask which had been made for a respectable innkeeper of that town, celebrated for the goodness of his ale. It holds 1,300 gallons, is sufficiently capacious to hold fifteen persons, and is the largest ever made in that place. The party sipped [the men of Somersetshire ought to drink, not their beverage out of a stone pot, which holds a gallon. There is a much larger cask than this at Jacobs and Son's, Mary Street, brewery, in Taunton, which contains, we believe, 5,000 gallons ; and in which, before it was first filled, twenty, persons, some years ago, partook of a liberal dinner, and spent a convivial afternoon.
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