Metternich noted in the margin of Gentz’s memorandum that those words reflected the “peculiar frivolousness” of the author, in whom he recognized “the rarest intellectual gifts and a true wealth of positive understanding.” According to Metternich, Gentz made the mistake of placing too much faith in his impressions, which were often the result of society chat. But what was the Congress, other than a constant stream of society chat, where the spies and the ladies played a role no less important than the ministers and heads of state? Metternich knew this better than most, which is confirmed by his final comment on the memorandum: “All in all, this account is correct.”⁷⁷

At the Congress of Vienna—and for the first time at a meeting of Western powers—there is concern about popular approval. Fear has brought the need for this entirely new caution, which requires innovations in language and conduct. Talleyrand is, as usual, the quickest to recognize it and would calmly state that at the Congress he defended “the cause of the people.”⁷⁸ How could such a change take place?

A quirk of history has turned the clock back. These rulers of ancient dynasties arrive at Vienna like as many parvenus of power, primordial usurpers. The Napoleonic disease has infected them all. His most perverse achievement has been to wipe out the expanse of time over which monarchs had given douceur to their power. Now they all appear like popular insurgents who need, however, to give an artificial patina of history to the crude reality of their command. This is how they are caught in the snare of legitimacy that Talleyrand has set. This is why they come out with “grand phrases” designed to reassure their people.

In their shortsightedness, they imagine these phrases will be enough to tide them over for a long while. They don’t take into account that these are drugged words: those who use them once will have to use them again and again, more and more frequently, until they become bound up in those words, until they require those same words to be used by their subjects, since such words in the meantime have become an essential instrument of power.

And yet someone, a few months before the opening of the Congress of Vienna, had described that new trajectory of the word, providing even a glimpse of the Stalinist trials to come. Benjamin Constant’s De l’Esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation had been printed on January 30, 1814:

“Despotism banishes all forms of liberty; usurpation needs those forms in order to justify overthrowing what it has replaced; but in seizing them, it profanes them.

… … …

“The despot forbids debate, and demands only obedience; the usurper prescribes a ludicrous test, as a preliminary to acceptance.

… … …

“There is no limit to the tyranny that seeks to secure a semblance of approval.

… … …

“It is usurpation that has invented those so-called acts of public sanction, those high-flown addresses, those monotonous compliments, a customary tribute that the same men generously proclaim, in more or less the same words, about the most conflicting decisions: in words where fear apes all the appearances of courage in order to celebrate its own shame and give thanks for its own misfortunes. A singular device that deceives no one! A game that impresses no one and should have yielded long ago to the arrows of ridicule! But ridicule attacks all and destroys nothing.