Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1858-11-11
rHE BoN-MoTs OF .TALLEYRAND

bon-mots, which for thirty years were the
delight of Frenchmen and tha-rast Of -saa..--
KIND, are marked not merely by the brev1fy
which is always the soul of wit, but by sub
tlety of thought and delicacy Of expression
which constitutes their hi ghtest charm
Besides this, his keenest sarcasms had usu-
ally certain air of good breeding that dis
tingushed them, greatly to his credit, from
the malignant jests Of Rogers and the rough
retorts of Douglas Jerrold. Nothing in
the way of witty and civil rebuke could be
finer than his reproof of young gentleman
who was boasting of the extreme beauty of
his mother, apparently implying that it
might account for the same advantage in the
person of the son: C'etait done, said the
great diplomat, blandly, Monsieur, votre
pere qui m'etait pas 81 bien '.It was your
father, then, who was. not handsome !"-
Lord Holland, in his Foreign "reminiscences.
gives another bon-mot of Talleyrand which
is not to be found in the old list of his clev-
er sayings. At the time when the celebrity
of Chateaubriand, the vaincst of all French
men, was rapidly on the wane, it happened
to be mentioned in conversation that he was
bitterly Of that infrmity. Je conpremds,
said Talleyrand, depuis qu'om a cesse de
parler de zui, IL Sc croft sourd! Il under
stand. since every body has ceased talking
about him he believes himself deaf?' The
only ungallant remark that is recorded "a
mong his innumerable jests is his saucy com
ment on the tender regard that he had once
entertained for Madam de Stael: III faut
avoir aime Nine de ,Stael pour connaitre
tout le bonheur daimer une Jete~ But his
finest witticism, and as happy sarcasm as
ever came from any man, is told in Lord
Brougham's Times of George III. This
has all the politeness as well as the subtle
wit that usually characterized the bon-mots
of Talleyrand. Not long after his breach
of friendship with Madam de Stael, that very
intellectual and extremely masculine woman
wrote her novel Of Delphine, in which she
satirized her former friend in the character
of an old woman, while she intended all the
delicate charms of the heroine to be taken as
her own. CHANGING to meet Madam de S.
soon after the publication of the book in a
fashionable assembly, he said to her, bowling
politely, II understand, madame. that in
your last novel you and I figure disguised
as females p The retort was certainly a
sumner, and for keen wit was such as no
other man could have made But never was
a wind-bag SO handsomely punctured as
when he took the sublime, out of an ego
tistical and vainglorious speech of Mirabeau.
At some important political crisis the great
orator was descanting in society on the qua
lities which minister required to extricate
the nation from its difficulties, namely, great
knowledge, genius, familiarity with the up
per classes, popularity with the lower classes,
the gift of writing and speaking eloquently,
all of Municipalities it was obvious enough he
reckoned as his own. Every body stared with
admiration but Talleyrand, who simply list
! ened attentively to the end and then observed,