ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the histories and biographies follow thus adding yet more contradictions. And of no one is this truer than of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. The chapter examines that the Talleyrand inevitably read his actions both as a diplomat and as a human being through the Romantic metaphors of the body: the lame body of the ci-devant bishop of Autun. The crosier and the cane seem to form the gravamen's that motivate the negative and predominant voices in the Talleyrand discourse. Many key French writers on history1 of the early twentieth century read him in light of the often-Satanic metaphors. Romantics, armed with a whole arsenal of newly invented or recently unearthed archetypes were able to transform the aristocratic, limping ci-devant bishop into one of the greatest, if, underappreciated, figures of Romantic legend. The representations, moreover, inevitably include the bishop's crosier. Contemporaneous French writers were to continue this reading of Talleyrand through his body and related signs.
