It is as pointless asking whether Talleyrand’s wish to recant was “sincere” as it would be to ask whether the final documents of the Congress of Vienna were “sincere.” It is clear that Talleyrand’s prime motive behind the negotiation was not religious but ceremonial. In his last years, Talleyrand was aware of the risk he was facing. On his death, he could be refused a religious burial, he could be exposed to the ignominy of a civil funeral. That was the only fear he had. He told his doctor: “Je n’ai qu’une peur, celle des inconvenances—I have only one fear, that of impropriety.”⁷³⁹ Throughout his life, Talleyrand had been scandal itself, but that scandal had always had the power to confer order, to escape from every “inconvenance.” And now, on his death, that precarious image was in danger of falling to pieces in the face of the solemn refusal of the Church. In his final act, he would have appeared like someone cast out of the most ancient order. Reading Fénelon, Talleyrand dwelt on one passage: “Let us cast our eye on the Church, namely on that visible society of children of God that has been preserved throughout time: it is the kingdom that has no end.⁷⁴⁰ All other powers rise and fall: after having amazed the world, they vanish.” Talleyrand wrote in the margin: “Magnificent!” His place was in the kingdom that has no end. “I have to do something with regard to Rome, I know,” he commented to Dorothée.⁷⁴¹

But, there again, recantation could also undermine the whole of his life, repudiating it. And here Talleyrand’s genius is revealed for the last time. In politics, the timing of acts is more crucial than the acts themselves. The politician is one who has time on his side. And Talleyrand had always held a relationship of brazen faith with the power of time. In his politics, delay was the esoteric weapon. This time, Talleyrand decided to push it to the limit, he decided to make it almost coincide with the limit, which is death itself. “La plupart des choses se font en ne les faisant pas—Most things are done by not being done”: this purest Western translation of the wu wei of Lao-tzu, Talleyrand’s governing maxim, was another secret that he one day confided to von Gagern.⁷⁴² This maxim was now given its most rigid application: let matters be done at the final moment before death, and indeed decide that it shall be done this way. Already on the point of death, on the penultimate day of his life, Talleyrand refused four times, with worldly civility, to sign his recantation. And he eventually announced that he would sign it the following day, between five and six in the morning. He signed just as six o’clock was striking, after which Dorothée slowly read the two pages of the document, emphasizing every word, in front of eminent witnesses who had been summoned on that May dawn. More than a recantation, it was a document of submission to the authority of the Church, verba generalia that wrapped the offending memories in a mantle.