work, asked Julie who was the political man who had written those
pages. She smiled, and confessed that they were the production of a
very young man, who had neither name nor experience, and was quite
unknown in the political world. M. M---- required to see me to believe.
I was introduced to him, and he received me with kindness which
afterwards ripened into a friendship, that remained unchanged until his
death. My work was never printed; but M. M----, in his turn, introduced
me to his friend, M. de Reyneval, a man of luminous understanding,
open-hearted, and of an attractive and cheerful though grave and
laborious mind, who was at that time the life of our foreign policy. He
died, not long ago, while ambassador at Madrid. M. de Reyneval, who had
read my work, received me with that encouraging grace and cordial smile
which seems to overleap distance, and always wins at first sight the
heart of a young man. He was one of those men from whom it is pleasant
to learn, because they seem, so to speak, to diffuse themselves in
teaching, and to give rather than prescribe. One learned more of Europe
in a few mornings by conversing with this most agreeable man, than in a
whole diplomatic library. He possessed tact, the innate genius of
negotiations. I owe to him my taste for those high political affairs
which he handled with full consciousness of their importance, but
without seeming to feel their weight. His strength made everything
easy, and his ready condescension seemed to infuse grace and heart into
business. He encouraged my desire to enter on the diplomatic career,
presented me himself to the Director of the Archives, M. d'Hauterive,
and authorized him to allow me access to the collection of our treaties
and negotiations. M. d'Hauterive, who had grown old over despatches,
might be said to be the unalterable tradition and the living dogma of
our diplomacy. With his commanding figure, hollow voice, his thick and
powdered hair, his long, bushy eyebrows overshading a deep-set and dim
eye, he seemed a living, speaking century. He received me like a