hardly be added, when he calls himself, or suffers himself to be called,
"the Talleyrand of Carlsrhue." He accompanied his Prince last year to
Mentz; where this old Sovereign was not treated by Bonaparte in the most
decorous or decent manner, being obliged to wait for hours in his
antechamber, and afterwards stand during the levees, or in the
drawing-rooms of Napoleon or of his wife, without the offer of a chair,
or an invitation to sit down. It was here where, by a secret treaty,
Bonaparte became the Sovereign of Baden, if sovereignty consists in the
disposal of the financial and military resources of a State; and they
were agreed to be assigned over to him whenever he should deem it proper
or necessary to invade the German Empire, in return for his protection
against the Emperor of Germany, who can have no more interest than intent
to attack a country so distant from his hereditary dominions, and whose
Sovereign is, besides, the grandfather of the consort of his nearest and
best ally.

Talleyrand often amused himself at Mentz with playing on the vanity and
affected consequence of Edelsheim, who was delighted if at any time our
Minister took him aside, or whispered to him as in confidence. One
morning, at the assembly of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, where Edelsheim
was creeping and cringing about him as usual, he laid hold of his arm and
walked with him to the upper part of the room. In a quarter of an hour
they both joined the company, Edelsheim unusually puffed up with vanity.

"I will lay and bet, gentlemen," said Talleyrand, "that you cannot, with
all your united wits, guess the grand subject of my conversation with the
good Baron Edelsheim." Without waiting for an answer, he continued: "As
the Baron is a much older and more experienced traveller than myself, I
asked him which, of all the countries he had visited, could boast the
prettiest and kindest women. His reply was really very instructive, and
it would be a great pity if justice were not done to his merit by its
publicity."

Here the Baron, red as a turkey-cock and trembling with anger,
interrupted. "His Excellency," said he, "is to-night in a humour to
joke; what we spoke of had nothing to do with women."

"Nor with men, either," retorted Talleyrand, going away.

This anecdote, Baron Dahlberg, the Minister of the Elector of Baden to
our Court, had the ingenuity to relate at Madame Chapui's as an evidence
of Edelsheim's intimacy with Talleyrand; only he