With Lafayette the pact of alliance between Good Causes and Stupidity is sealed. From then on, those seeking out the good of Man will have a grossly inaccurate, good-natured, obtuse, pompous image of man. Lafayette lets himself be escorted by the Unknown Soldier. For Good to return to being a fascinating conquest, it is necessary to await Simone Weil. And this will only be because Weil paid careful attention to platonic Good.

Lafayette is the true opposite of Talleyrand. They are born and die within a few years of each other, both have illustrious ancestries, both are involved in everything. Lafayette, convinced from the very start that he is moving with the times, is especially eager every now and then to strike historic poses, and in the meantime to survive. He has an unshakable capacity not to notice. Talleyrand also moves with the times, follows the trends, changes his shirts and his allegiances. But this is not why he is not forgiven. On the contrary: it is felt that his amorality is consistent and faithful, that his ever-moving and restless waters conceal some solid, ancient rock that resists the ravages of time much better than the papier-mâché of Lafayette.

After the many insults hurled against Talleyrand in Lafayette’s name, Talleyrand’s revenge on Lafayette comes from a judge who is equal to his task: Vautrin. In Le Père Goriot, during the course of Rastignac’s initiation, the convict offers him these words: “I have a friend whom I have attached closely to myself, a colonel in the Army of the Loire who has just been transferred into the Garde Royale.⁴¹ He has taken my advice and turned ultra-royalist: he is not one of those fools who never change their opinions. Of all pieces of advice, my cherub, I would give you this—don’t stick to your opinions any more than your words. If anyone asks you for them, let him have them—at a price. A man who prides himself on never changing opinions is a man who ends up always going in a straight line, an idiot who believes in infallibility. There are no such things as principles, there are only events; there are no laws, there are only circumstances: the man of talent accepts events and circumstances and turns them to his own ends. If principles and laws were fixed, nations would not change them as readily as we change our shirts. The individual is not obliged to be more particular than a whole nation. The man who has served France less than anyone is venerated as a fetish because he has always seen red; at most he should be placed in the Conservatoire, among the automatons, with the label ‘Lafayette,’ while the prince against whom everyone casts his stone, and who despises humanity enough to spit in its face all the oaths it demands, prevented the division of France at the Congress of Vienna: they owe him laurels, and they throw mud at him. Oh! I know something of affairs, I can tell you! I hold the secrets of many men! But enough.”