Note 53 — Chapter XIV

Talleyrand probably gives the more correct version. Both he and Beugnot make the King say: “We were the cleverer. If you had been so, you would say to me: ‘Let us sit down and talk.’ Instead of that I say to you: ‘Take a seat and talk to me.’” Talleyrand says the King was speaking of their remote ancestors and the relative positions their families had won in France. Beugnot would have it that the emigrant party had been the cleverer in 1789. But it is impossible to understand the words in this sense. They would imply that Talleyrand had aimed at the throne.