His ordeal was to postpone a gesture, in the throes of death, to the right moment when there was no turning back. Tortured by the “enormous sore” of the anthrax that made it impossible for him to lie on his back, supported under his arms by two people who were alternated every two hours, with his shoulders on a pillow “that was held suspended with ropes from the ceiling,” Talleyrand continued to play the gambler: he wagered on the hour of his own death, laying a stake on his last moment of lucidity.^{743, 744} Once again, his final gesture would be a signature. A tiny gesture, but the only one that represents everything. And beside it, as close as possible to his signature (“CHARLES-MAURICE, PRINCE DE TALLEYRAND,” the same that had been read at the end of the great treaties of the period), there had to be the seal of an unbroken authority: the signature of death. And so it was: nine hours after he had signed, Talleyrand died. The close proximity of his signature to his death guaranteed him from every attack. When the document reached Rome, the Holy See judged it insufficient. If Talleyrand had survived a few more days, he would have had to face the humiliation of signing again. And to sign a document far more onerous. But now it was too late. Talleyrand could no longer make any correction, he could no longer condemn himself with the words imposed by the Church, which would have compromised the sovereignty of his style. By that time, the Prince had received the sacraments, and had died “in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church,” as he was eager to specify in the opening words of his last will and testament. As for the Church itself, it was never made public that the Pope had considered Talleyrand’s recantation insufficient. Those papers remained on Gregory XVI’s desk, along with his most valued documents. Then they vanished. The maternal Vatican archives have no trace of them.

The theological confrontation, the true agōnía, ended with a phrase, with a gesture of staggering insolence and wisdom, which has been reported by a single witness, Prosper de Barante. When Abbé Dupanloup approached the Prince to administer extreme unction, Talleyrand held out the backs of his hands, saying: “Monsieur l’abbé, remember that I am a bishop.” As bishop, Talleyrand had already been anointed on his palms many years earlier. Now it was the turn of the other side, so that they were wholly covered by the unction. With that gesture, Talleyrand acknowledged that the blind whim of his parents to enforce a spiritual investiture upon him had, in reality, been more clear-sighted than any desire of his own. Thus he had been compelled to guard the sacred, clothing it in scandal, through “a revolution that has lasted fifty years,” as was written in the document he had just signed. But now he offered the backs of his hands for anointing. He who, for many years, had been most likened to the image of the Devil was acknowledging that his soul, at the beginning, had been sold to God.