The Primal Scene, from which Talleyrand’s view of politics derives, is played out where his grandmother Mortemart lives, “in a vast room of the chateau, which they called ‘the pharmacy.’ ”³¹ There, seated beside his grandmother’s velvet armchair (where he was placed—he emphasized—at the age of five “as of right,” in exactly the same way as he would later sit beside Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis Philippe), the young Talleyrand observed the primordial mystery of power: the power of healing, which the thaumaturgic kings used to display on those afflicted with scrofula (Louis XVI would still do it at Reims, and the young chaplain Talleyrand would see him repeat it on 2,400 sufferers who came from the farthest provinces: “May God heal you; the King touches you”).³² Grandmother Mortemart applied it to the sick of the village. Young Talleyrand took part in the ceremony with devotion. On those occasions his grandmother “had a silk dress trimmed with lace.³³ She wore a cascade of ribbons, with bows on the sleeves matching the color of the seasons. Her large cuffs had three layers. Her Sunday dress, which was more elaborate than that of the other days of the week, had a fur collar, a cap with a bow, and a black bonnet that tied beneath the chin.” Around her, a small court of Périgord nobles kept order according to rank, flanking her as she sat in a velvet armchair, before an old black lacquer table, distributing ointments, syrups, and other medicaments to the peasants with a ceremonial gesture.

His grandmother indicated the ointment to be applied, and “one of the gentlemen who had accompanied her to mass went to fetch it.³⁴ Another produced a small chest containing linen.” Young Talleyrand then took out a piece of cloth and held it out while his grandmother cut it. This was the duty of the minister, from the days of Shang China: to make sure the cloth to be applied as a bandage is cut carefully. In the majesty of this scene, Talleyrand has described (without stating it) his highest conception of politics—a conception that would operate behind designs that no one can yet claim to have reconstructed. And in that very scene he sensed a reality, as yet unexplained, that would always guide him: the “heredity of feelings,” the essentially nourishing, as well as destructive, relationship between time and quality of whatever kind.³⁵ Time alone ensures that every reality secretes its douceur. Otherwise, everything is naturally bitter, insipid, arid. The old Périgord nobles who paid court to Madame de Mortemart and were ready to leave no trace of their existence prepared with their silent step the arrival of something unprecedented, indicating to the young Talleyrand how he might bear it: “The ways of the Périgord nobility resembled their old castles: there was something grand and solid about them; the light filtered in faintly but gently.³⁶ They were moving slowly but surely toward a more enlightened civilization.”