Talleyrand settled in the United States, and during some years he devoted himself to commerce, and engaged in speculations with a considerable degree of activity. There always was something adventurous and bold in his disposition in money matters; to use a familiar expression, no one ever made his fortune oftener than M. de Talleyrand, without being particularly scrupulous as to the means he employed. His property in France was sequestered, it was, therefore, with very limited funds that he commenced his mercantile operations in the United States; and it was certainly singular enough to see a bishop of 1789, afterwards a popular orator, then a secret diplomatist acting as a spy for a party of the National Assembly, finally transforming himself into a merchant in a counting-house at Boston or New York. The shades of the ancient Bosons of Périgord, those great feudal barons, must have been horrified and have indignantly grasped their lances and their coats of arms when they contemplated their descendant seated amid bales of cotton in a republic of shopkeepers. In this manner do revolutions take hold of a man's destiny, play with it, and raise and abase it by turns; but the nobility had already accustomed France to still more extraordinary courses: had not men of noble birth in Brittany and Gascony become freebooters and buccaneers under Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV.?
A commercial profession in a country so distant from important events did not suit Talleyrand's inclination, and when order was a little restored, he lost no time in soliciting permission to return to France, the scene of his earliest days. He had left many friends there, among the partisans of what was called the moderate republic and constitutional system; such were Chenier and Madame de Staël, belonging to the literary and philosophical portion of society under the Directory, who had regained some degree of importance after the Reign of Terror was past, for in calmer times the different shades of a party become more evident.
It was particularly to the earnest solicitations of Madame de Staël that Talleyrand owed his return, and we know that her influence was at that time very great. Chenier undertook the report, and a decree was passed revoking the rigorous measures that had been adopted in 1793 against the late Bishop of Autun; it was also declared that he had not emigrated. Talleyrand had at that time entirely left off the ecclesiastical habit, and appeared every where as a layman. He enjoyed in the world a great reputation for wit and talent; there was something noble in his countenance, without its being exactly striking; he carried his head remarkably well, and his hair fell in curls upon his shoulders. He was no longer a young man, still his reputation for gallantry and for agreeableness in society had procured for him a great ascendancy over some women of that period, in the midst of that most singular society in the time of Barras and the Directory, in which were jumbled together men of high rank, contractors, renowned characters, and courtesans. Talleyrand had brought with him Madame Grand, with whom he had become acquainted at Hamburg, and, by a whimsical contrast, it was said no woman ever was possessed of less sense or less intelligence. We know how many capital stories were told of her in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, of which even the republic was so much afraid. The reason is, that the spirit of good society possesses great influence at the time that a bad state of society prevails. Jests were uttered, and the most charming _naïvetés_ were attributed to Madame Talleyrand, of which that regarding _M. Denon and Robinson Crusoe_ is, perhaps, the most inimitable.