Over fifty years later, the old Goethe found himself leafing through the Collection des portraits historiques de M. le baron Gérard, published by Urbain Canel in Paris, 1826. They were etchings of somewhat doubtful quality that Monsieur Pierre Adam had made from those sumptuous portraits scattered around Europe. Goethe’s friend Boisserée complained, during one visit, about the crudeness of the execution. “My dear boy,” replied Goethe, “we, in our Weimar modesty, are content with such things.⁷ You are too refined and difficult to please.” Goethe spent much time studying those etchings alone. Art was not the point, he was following a physiognomic dream of his own. Leafing through the album, his eye fell on a man he had known on that now famous day at Erfurt, sitting to the right of Napoleon (who had made that embarrassing remark: “Voilà un homme!”). Studying the portrait of Talleyrand, he wrote: “The more we proceed to contemplate this collection, the more important it seems to us.” And yet, in commenting on the portraits of Alexander I, Charles X, and Louis Philippe d’Orléans, his words of appreciation were amiably generic. Only in front of Talleyrand do we feel him sinking into that obscure contemplative stillness from which his finest pages emerge: “Here before us we have the prime diplomat of the century. He sits in perfect stillness and calmly awaits all the circumstances of the moment. Sitting in a room that is most dignified, though not ostentatious, we find him wearing simple and appropriate court dress, his plumed hat on the couch just behind him, as if this homme d’affaires is awaiting the call that his carriage is ready to take him to a meeting; his left arm resting on the corner of the table, beside it papers and quills, his right arm in his lap, his right leg crossed over his left, and he appears to us perfectly impassive. We cannot but recall the gods of Epicurus, who live ‘where it does not rain and does not snow nor does the tempest ever blow’; such is the calmness of this man, untouched by the storms that hiss around him. One can understand how he manages to assume such an appearance, but not how he can maintain it. His gaze is quite impenetrable; he looks ahead, but it is doubtful whether he sees those who are looking at him. His gaze is not looking inward, like that of someone who is thinking, nor is it looking outward, like someone who is watching; his gaze rests in and on himself, like his whole figure, which suggests not exactly self-satisfaction, but certainly some lack of connection with the outside.

“But that’s enough, here we can play physiognomists and interpreters as much as we wish, in any case our understanding will prove too short, our experience too poor, our imagination too limited to give us an adequate idea of such a being.⁸ It is likely that the same will happen for future historians, who can see to what extent this picture of ours will be of assistance to them.”