the chameleon of faith

　With the Marquis de Lafayette's words, a middle-aged man of about forty with a slight limp in his feet wearing a black bishop's robe walked in and bowed to the others.

　　"Bishop Talleyrand!" Several people in the small parlor recognized this cleric at once.

　　This bishop, my lord, was a popular man in the various salons of Paris, as well as in the various pleasure-seeking establishments. He came from a family of fallen nobles, and had been sent to the seminary to study from an early age. This is also the way that many sons of noble families often go.

　　Generally speaking, the children of noble families often have these several ways out.

　　First, to inherit the property of their ancestors, and then become a happy fat house that sits and eats and waits for death - however, the property that Talleyrand spoke of had already been consumed by the happy fat houses of the previous generations.

　　Second, go and become an officer and then live the good life on His Majesty's pay - yet the army has no need of a crippled officer.

　　Third, to become a civil officer, and then live well on His Majesty's salary, embezzled public money, and bribes from others - yet to get a civil position, one needed to bribe someone first. Talleyrand's family, however, could not come up with this money.

　　So Talleyrand was left with only one last option: to become a cleric.

　　In theory, all believers are God's people, and are equal before God. But in reality, there are always some people who are more equal before God than others. Generally speaking, clergymen of commoner origin, in the Church, at most make it to the level of priests of their own church, and clergymen above the level of bishops are all of noble origin.

　　The Church had a great deal of assets and was able to make a good living as a bishop.

　　There is a story in Boccaccio's Decameron. It says that a Catholic persuaded his friend, a Jew, to convert to Catholicism. The Jew was a little moved and indicated to his friend that he would visit Rome, the capital of Christendom.

　　His friend was horrified at this decision, and he felt that his mission would surely fail, for no man has ever gone to Rome and not seen the arrogance of the Catholic Church. There was no virtue there at all, but only every kind of sin.

　　Yet that Jew went to Rome and came back and was immediately baptized and converted to Catholicism because he felt, "The Catholic Church is so corrupt and depraved, but still stands, and this must be because it has the true God behind it."

　　Unlike the Jew, Talleyrand was originally Catholic and studied theology for five years at St. Sulpice Seminary. These five years of study did not bring him "closer to God," but rather made him an atheist. However, since the church could give him money, he still pretended to be very religious.

　　With this feigned piety, he was granted the abbacy of Saint-Rémy in Reims and an annuity of 18,000 livres (a silver coin, later developed into a franc) when Louis XVI ascended the throne.

　　With this money, Talleyrand spent his time in Paris living the life of a secular aristocrat. Because that deanship was a beautiful job with only a salary and no work, he had plenty of time on his hands. He bought a cozy little house in Paris and alternated between Reims and the capital, drinking, gambling, and courting women.

　　He met some bankers, he helped them to get information about the Church and even the government of the Kingdom, and those people provided him with all kinds of opportunities to get rich, and he made a lot of money by speculating on all kinds of securities.

　　Talleyrand is not a miser, money comes fast, spend it also dry. Relying on the help of his friends, after the necklace incident, if not because of the queen's obstruction, he almost succeeded in replacing the position of cardinal of Roan.

　　Although he didn't manage to become a cardinal, he still managed to get his hands on the position of Archbishop of Orton District.

　　Because Talleyrand had climbed up step by step by relying on the king, he should have been a hardcore conservative, king's party in most people's eyes, yet now he appeared here.

　　"Gentlemen, it is an honor to meet you." Bishop Talleyrand spoke.

　　"Your Excellency, Bishop, is there something you want to say to us when you suddenly came to our assembly?" Sierras asked.

　　"Count Artois is ready to leave France with his family and head to Italy." Bishop Talleyrand replied.

　　"The Comte d'Artois was the brother of Louis XVI and the staunchest of the old guard. Tocqueville, a later historian, had this to say about him:

　　"We have seen in history many a leader whose intellectual structure, his level of culture, his political judgment and his choice of values, will remain at a certain stage in his adolescence. Then no matter how long he lives or how many changes occur in the world, he manifests himself as a zombie at some point.

　　If there is some chance for him to ascend to a great position, he will definitely look for resources to construct his political philosophy, value choices and governing strategy from the moment when the process of his intellectual and knowledge development stops. The character of such a person is usually obstinate, paranoid, and foolishly confident, foolhardy and self-serving, believing that he defends certain values and can open up a new direction in the development of the country.

　　In fact, they often wear ancient costumes but perform on a modern stage, like a ghost in the grave suddenly appearing in broad daylight; everyone knows he is a ghost, but he thinks he is the true God. But none of the ideas he chooses, none of the policies he pursues, are moldy old stuff."

　　"Count Artois is going into exile?" Sierras revealed a contemptuous smile, "He's escaping? Wasn't he all for suppressing us? And now he's fleeing?"

　　"If he flees, I'm only afraid that a certain Highness will be even happier." Banav, however, frowned.

　　"But that's a good thing, isn't it?" The Marquis de Lafayette said, "The king's power has weakened, and now His Majesty has no more power to rely on except for us."

　　"But we don't have much to do today with the mobs that that Highness has instigated just as much." Barnave said.

　　"Then let him continue his show. What those mobs want that we can't give, can that Highness? While he was setting fire to his own brother's house, did he not consider that his own house was connected to his own brother's house?" The Marquis de Lafayette said.

　　"Our house also adjoins theirs." Barnave replied.

　　"You are right, Mr. Barnave. In fact, the third degree is a false concept." Bishop Talleyrand spoke, "Three ranks, this division is all nonsense, it's just that some fools actually believe it all."

　　"What do you mean by that?" Sieyes frowned. His famous work was "What is the Third Degree". Now that Talleyrand was saying that "Third Class" was a false concept, it naturally made him unhappy.

　　"Gentlemen, please take a look at our neighbor to the west, the most successful country in the world today. Think again, what is privilege really?" Talleyrand said.

　　"I don't understand what you mean." Sierras said. He wasn't able to follow Talleyrand's train of thought, which made him dislike Talleyrand more and more.

　　"Privilege, after all, is the priority of getting a good life." Talleyrand said, "Traditional nobles, by virtue of their birth, enjoyed this priority. But in modern times, this priority of birth has, to a large extent, become unworkable. Even without a revolution, the priority of birth has necessarily, if not already, been converted into the priority of property."

　　Seeing that Sierz seemed a bit unconvinced, Talleyrand smiled again and said, "Take myself as an example. I was born into a small noble family. When I was born, I didn't catch the good times, and my family has long since fallen. The wealth of the old days had long since fallen into the hands of those Jews, and there was nothing left but a palindrome (referring to the word 'de' in the name that denotes its aristocratic status). Our family was no better off than a decent person of the third rank, and even far worse off. Because they have more money. Money is privilege."

　　At this point, Talleyrand paused slightly so that everyone could digest his words. After a few moments of this, he continued, "Let's take a look at the English, are there nobles in England? Yes, are there decent people in England who are not nobles? All the same there are. And are there thugs in England who have nothing to lose? Of course, there are. What country does not have poor people who have nothing to lose and therefore have nothing to fear? Why, then, can there be a bloodless 'Glorious Revolution' in England?"

　　"Why?" Sierras asked.

　　Talleyrand laughed, "Because the English understand that money is power and power is money. These two things are interchangeable. One can be a nobleman, a cleric, and a wealthy man all at the same time. There is no unbridgeable gap in this."

　　"Just like you, Lord Bishop?" Sierz asked with a sarcastic smile.

　　"Yes." Talleyrand laughed without being disobedient and said, "It is only poverty that has a deep gulf with privilege. The nobles should realize this and should open the doors of power to those decent people. And those decent people should combine with the nobles, so that the decent people share power and the nobles share wealth. In the end everyone got what they wanted, and that's what made Britain strong and stable.

　　All this time I've been trying to convince the king and the other nobles to follow the English example, so that all decent people can come to an alliance.

　　But in France there are too many fools. Among the nobles there are zombies like the Comte d'Artois, still living in the Middle Ages, who still thinks that he can rule France according to the medieval way, and is not willing to give up a little bit of profit to those rich and decent people, not realizing that money is power. How could those rich, or more accurately, decent people with power, be at his mercy?

　　And then there's the smarmy fool like the Duke of Orleans, who opens the bottle that seals the devil at will without thinking about how it will end up in the future! Do we really want to share our power and wealth with those trouserless men? The wealth of France is too great to be divided equally among these rascals. But now the Duke of Orleans has set them free and shown them their power. Once they realize their power, they will not fail to use it for their own benefit. But what they want, we can't give, because they're trying to live like us! That's never going to happen!

　　Whether they are nobles, or rich, they are naturally supposed to come into a holy alliance. Yet because of stubbornness, stupidity, and damnable arrogance and ambition, they've all gone down the wrong path. One stubbornly refused to move forward, even though moving forward should have brought them a better life; the other recklessly unleashed the devil.

　　Today France is in great danger because of these fools. In my opinion, the king can no longer save France nowadays, and the only ones who can save it are those who are present here. That is why I appear before you now."

　　Sierz stared at Talleyrand with wide eyes for half a day, then he took a breath and said, "Your Grace the Bishop, you are the Machiavelli of France, a man of no faith."

　　"No, Monsieur Sieyes." Talleyrand said with a serious face, "You are prejudiced against me. It is true that I do not really believe in God, but I love France."

　　"Monsignor Bishop," said Barnave, "I am not interested in your beliefs. I know that you have been reprimanded for taking the initiative to call on Voltaire (who was excommunicated for his fierce opposition to Catholicism). And you made a confession to His Eminence the Cardinal, which was said to be sincere. But we don't care about any of that. What I am concerned with is how we can put the demons back in now that they have been let out of the bottle. Is there anything you can teach us about this?"

　　"There are only two ways to put back in devils that have been out of the bottle since the beginning of time." Talleyrand answered at once.

　　"Which two?"

　　"The first is King Solomon's method of overpowering the demons by their own power and forcing them inside the bottle. The other way, the way of the fisherman, deceives them with lies and lures them into the bottle themselves."

　　"For thinking a bishop, you actually use pagan stories as analogies." Sierras couldn't help but interject again.

　　"Seek the truth, even if it's far away in the Eastern Great Eating Country." Talleyrand replied.

　　"That's another pagan quote."

　　"It's not as if France has been allied with paganism for a day or two."

　　"Let's get back to the point, Monsieur Sieyes, Monsignor Bishop." Barnave said, "Monsignor Bishop, which approach do you think we can use?"

　　"A two-pronged approach." Talleyrand replied, "However, before we can prepare to put the devil in a bottle, we must first find a way to dispose of the fellow who, for the sake of his own ambition, put the devil out of the bottle. Otherwise, although this highness is limited in his abilities, and if we really ask him to do something most likely he won't be able to do it well, for many years he has been messing with the king, and there aren't many people in France who are more proficient than him in regards to how to mess with the king. It won't be easy to succeed in our affairs if we can't get rid of him first."

　　"How shall we deal with him?"

　　"Don't rush it yet, wait for him to make his own mistakes." Talleyrand said.