MIRABEAU

1749-1791.

It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast of character than that between the subject of the preceding memoir and the present. Condorcet was a man of warm affections, well regulated mind, and clear precise understanding; his enthusiasm was lighted up by benevolence, and the love of that which he considered truth. He was timid, yet firm; mild, yet resolute. Mirabeau resembled his Italian ancestors, rather than the usual French character. His violent passions governed him, and caused him to govern others through his earnestness and vehemence. His intellect showed itself rather in eloquent bursts than in works of reason, and yet he could apply himself more sedulously than almost any other man when he had an object in view. Profligate, extravagant, and proud, ardent and ambitious, with a warm kind heart, and a mind which erred only under the influence of passion, he passed a life of adversity and oppression, to die at the moment he reached a degree of power which is allotted to few men not born to its inheritance.

The family and progenitors of Mirabeau were all remarkable. He left, in manuscript, a sketch of the family history, and a more detailed life of his grandfather, in which we find singularly displayed the energy, iron will, and pride of the race. The name they originally bore was Arrighetti; the family was Florentine, and driven from that city in 1268, during one of the revolutions occasioned by the quarrels of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. A sentence of perpetual exile was pronounced against Azzo Arrighetti and his descendants, and Azzo took refuge, as many other ghibelines had done, in Provence; and the name of Riquetti is found on various occasions in the history of Marseilles. Those who bore it played at all times a foremost and bold part: they were eagle-eyed men, fierce and headstrong, yet discerning. During the war of the fronde the family was royalist, and was rewarded by a patent of Louis XIV., which erected their estate of Mirabeau into a marquisate. Jean Antoine, grandfather of the subject of this memoir, was one of five sons, who all ran an eccentric, bold, and active career. He passed his younger days in the army, and went through many hairbreadth perils and incredible adventures. The last campaign in which he served was that of the duke de Vendôme, in Italy. He performed prodigies of valour in the battle of Cassano, and was left for dead on the field. Found by the enemy with some slight signs of life, prince Eugene, who knew and esteemed him, sent him, without ransom, to the French camp, that the operation necessary for his preservation might not be delayed. His life was saved, but he survived frightfully mutilated, and a martyr to severe physical suffering to the end of his life. He returned home to find his fortune dilapidated, but never to lose that intrepidity and pride that formed the foundation of the family character. He married, and found in the admirable character of his wife the reward and solace of his sufferings: she had been struck by the heroism of his character; and it is related of her, that some expressions of pity for her being the wife of a cripple, and of a man of a haughty, imperious character, having met her ear, she exclaimed, "Ah! if you knew how happy one is to be able to respect one's husband." He was an admirable landlord and a careful father; and his family flourished under his superintendence, till implicated, through the imprudence of his wife's brother, in the system of Law, he was ruined on the breaking of the bubble. From that time he lived in retirement, bending all his efforts to the paying his debts and repairing his fortune. He died in 1737, at the age of seventy-one, feared yet beloved by all in connexion with him.

He left three sons: Victor, the eldest, succeeded to the honours and possessions of the house. This man was a strange mixture of good intention and evil doing;—a general philanthropist, and yet the persecutor and enemy of his own family; against various members of which he obtained, at different times, fifty-seven lettres de cachet, nearly a score of which were levelled against his eldest son. He had more vanity than pride, and his haughtiness was unaccompanied by a spirit of justice, yet joined to a perfect conviction that he was always in the right. Implacable towards others, indulgent with regard to himself: hence spring the contradictions observable in his character; we find displayed a mixture of sternness and softness, rancour and good humour. Had he been as severe with himself as others, his whole character had been rigid, but he would have been more just and virtuous: as it was, we find him plastic to the influence of his own passions or vanity, and become gentle and even playful under their influence: whatever jarred with these found him despotic and unforgiving. Thus he grew into a domestic tyrant, and while he ran after popularity in his own person, he disdained and crushed the talents of his son. His literary reputation did not begin till he had passed mid-life; it was founded on "L'Ami des Hommes," a work in five volumes, which, in the midst of great diffuseness and confusion, is yet remarkable for the knowledge it displays in agriculture and statistics, and for many clear and liberal views. His "Théorie de l'Impôt," published in 1760, caused him, through his attack on the financiers of the day, to be imprisoned in the fortress of Vincennes. He wrote many other works on the same species of subjects. It is a curious circumstance that, while he adopted in his publications a bad, inflated, and obscure style, his private letters are witty, gay, and flowing. He had, of course, served in his youth; but disappointment with regard to promotion, combined with his desire to acquire a literary reputation, caused him to quit the army. He married a young widow of good birth and fortune, Marie Geneviève de Vassam, who had been previously married to the marquis de Saulvebeuf. His desire of shining in literature made him approach Paris, and he bought the estate of Bignon, not far from Nemours, and gave himself up to what he considered his vocation. For many years the disturbances of his domestic life were confined under his own roof. He had a family of eleven children: he was passionately attached to his mother, whom he regarded with a filial veneration that belonged to the old school of manners and piety. Fifteen years changed the scene; quarrels and litigations arose between him and his wife. She was violent and indiscreet; he was tyrannical and unjust; and conjugal infidelity rendered their separation final. Madame de Pailly, a young woman of great beauty, to whom he was attached, installed herself at Bignon, and exercised a most powerful and sinister influence over his conduct towards his family. His wife was indignant: he replied to her resentful representations by the most odious acts of despotism, and conceived a violent hatred against the mother of his children. A scandalous lawsuit was the result; the fortunes of both parties were irreparably injured; and the unfortunate offspring were in a worse situation than orphans;—hated by their father,—not daring to see their mother, who was shut up in a convent,—treated with the utmost severity on one hand, and without resource in maternal affection on the other. Added to his matrimonial dissensions were the attacks made on him in his quality of author. "L'Ami des Hommes," as the marquis de Mirabeau was commonly called from his book, carried all the impetuosity, self-sufficiency, and haughtiness of his race into his literary career; and it may be supposed that became as stormy as his father's had been on the field of battle. His confidence in his own talents and powers was unbounded: he never attributed the misfortunes that pursued him to any error or rashness of his own; he looked on them as the dispensation of Providence, or as arising from the folly and injustice of his fellow-creatures. No hesitation, no doubt with regard to himself, ever entered his mind; every thing was sacrificed to his opinions, his convictions, his mistaken sense of his duties. He was blinded, as a French biographer observes, by the most deceptive of all fanaticisms—that of his own infallibility. The passions that in another he would have regarded as crimes, he looked on as virtues in himself: he could never perceive the shadow of right or justice in any cause or views at variance with his own. Such was the father who became the bitter enemy and persecutor of a son, endowed with all the genius, passions, and faults of his race.

Gabriel Honoré was the fifth child of the marquis: through the previous death of a brother in the cradle, he was, at the time of his birth, the only son. He was born at Bignon. He came into the world with teeth, and was an enormously large infant. It was remarked of him, that, destined to become the most turbulent and active of men, he was born with a twisted foot; and, gifted with extraordinary eloquence, he was tongue-tied. At three years of age he had the small-pox, and his mother, who dabbled in medicine, making some experiments on the pustules, the result was that he remained frightfully seared and marked. His father was evidently deeply mortified, and wrote to his brother, "Your nephew is as ugly as if he were Satan's." His other children being remarkably handsome, this circumstance became more disastrous to the sufferer. The boy, however, early showed talent, which was nurtured by an excellent tutor, and less judiciously overlooked by his father, who resolved to give him an education of unequalled excellence—that is, one of perpetual restraint, reprimand, and chastisement. We have interesting details of his infancy and youth, in extracts from a series of letters which passed between the marquis and his brother.[10] The bailli de Mirabeau was entered by his father into the order of knights of Malta in his infancy. He served in the French navy for the space of thirty-one years, when he retired without recompence, except such as he derived from a high reputation. He was a proud, austere, and resolute man, possessing at the same time extreme piety, great goodness, and unblemished integrity of character, together with a foundation of good sense that contrasts with his brother's intemperate sallies. Uncompromising even to roughness, he was ill suited to a court, while his bravery and sound understanding fitted him for public service. Proud of the antiquity of his race; openly disdainful of the new-created noblesse; frank, upright, but somewhat discontented, as he well might be, at the small reward his services received; yet at the same time too haughty to wait obsequiously on the great, or even to take the measures necessary to refresh their memory, he passed the latter part of his life in retirement. He devoted his fortune to his brother's service, whom he respected as the head of the family, and regarded with warm fraternal affection. A correspondence subsisted between the one, living either at Paris or Bignon, and the other, who was serving his country at a distance, or established at Mirabeau, which discloses the secrets of the family, and unveils the motives and passions that swayed the conduct of the marquis. The bailli was deeply interested in the child who was to transmit the family name, and, being at the time of the boy's birth governor of Guadaloupe, wrote earnestly home for information with regard to him. The child early developed quickness of intellect and turbulence of temper, joined to kindness of heart. Poisson, his tutor, was a careful but severe guide, and if ever he was softened, the marquis stepped in to chastise. Soon, too soon, the paternal scoldings and punishments became angry reprimands and constant disapprobation, which verged into hatred. These feelings were increased by the imprudences and vivacity of the boy, the misjudged quarrels of the mother, the artful manœuvres of madame de Pailly, and the bitter hatred conceived by an old servant named Gervin, who, from some unknown cause, exercised extraordinary influence over the marquis. The chief fault particularised by the father was the boy's habitual untruths. A love of or indifference to truth is one of the characteristics with which human beings are born. The former may be cultivated, the latter checked, but the propensities do not the less remain; and it is the most painful discovery that a parent can make, to find that his child is not by natural instinct incapable of falsehood. This innate and unfortunate vice, joined to the boy's wildness and heedlessness, caused the father to write of him in severe terms, scarcely suited to his' childish years. "He seems to me," he writes, "in addition to all the baseness of his natural character, a mere fool, an unconquerable maniac. He attends a number of excellent masters; and as every one, from his confessor to his playmate, are so many watchers, who tell me every thing, I discern the nature of the heart, and do not believe that he can come to any good." The first master, Poisson, set over him, however, took a liking to the boy, and praised his prodigious memory and good heart. The father, instead of being pleased, grew angry. He declared that he would now be utterly spoilt, and took him out of his hands to place him in those of an abbé Choquart, a severe disciplinarian, who was bid not to spare punishment. The severity of the marquis may be judged by this one circumstance, that taking his son from a tutor whom he loved, and placing him in a school to which he was sent as to a prison, he insisted that he should go by another name. "I did not choose," he writes, "that an illustrious name should be disgraced on the benches of a school of correction, and I caused him to be entered as Pierre Buffière. 1764.
Ætat.
15. My gentleman struggled, wept, argued in vain. I bid him win my name, which I would only restore when he deserved it." Had the father been just the youth would soon have regained his affections and name. The abbé Choquart, at first severe with his pupil, soon became attached to and proud of him. His progress was astonishing, his memory prodigious. The dead and living languages, mathematics, drawing, and music, and various manly exercises, occupied him by turns, and he distinguished himself in all. In the midst of the marquis's vituperations we find no absolute facts. He calls his son lying by nature, base, and so vicious that the worst consequences are to be apprehended: this is carried so far that, when he mentions that his masters applaud and his comrades love him, he adds that the boy ought to be smothered, if it were only for his powers of cajolery and fascination.

This severity frightened but did not conquer the youth. He worked hard to obtain his father's approbation; but indiscretions came between to widen the breach. Perpetually in expectation of some degrading or excessive punishment, he lived in a state of excitement, and even terror, ill fitted to inspire the gentleness and repose of spirit which is the best ingredient of honour and virtue. As he grew older his turbulence became more dangerous; and his father, considering it necessary to tame him by increased hardships, placed him in the army. "I am going to send him," he writes, "as volunteer, to the strictest and most laborious military school. A man, a chip of the old times, the marquis de Lambert, has founded one in his regiment. He pretends that the exclusive atmosphere of honour, and a hard and cold moral regimen, can restore beings the most vitiated even by nature. I have requested him to name as Mentor an officer who, not from reason and deduction, but from instinct, should have a disgust and natural scorn for all baseness. I have named Gervin as his other Mentor, and the only servant-master of this young man. Severity will cost me nothing, for with him it is my right and my duty." The perpetual recurrence to the accusation of baseness affords some excuse for the father's inveteracy; yet it was certainly ill judged to set a servant over a proud aspiring youth as master, and this servant, who hated him, was one of the chief engines of perpetuating the marquis's bad opinion. 1767.
Ætat.
18. However, by placing him beyond the paternal control, under the impartial jurisdiction of a regiment, the young man had a chance of being fairly treated, and the consequence was that his good conduct was acknowledged and a brevet rank promised him. He was not allowed to reap any advantage: his father kept him so wholly without money that he incurred a few debts; he lost, also, four louis in play, a vice to which he showed no predilection in after life, and we may therefore judge that this trifling loss was accidental. His father's wrath flamed out. "He is cast," he wrote to his brother, "in the mould of his maternal race, and would devour twenty inheritances and twelve kingdoms if he could lay his hands on them. But I can endure as little as I like of that species of evil, and a close and cool prison will soon moderate his appetite and thin him down."

Added to this error was the unfortunate circumstance of an amour, the first outbreak of his passionate nature on emerging from boyhood, in which he was the successful rival of his superior officer, who thus became his enemy, and joined with the father to crush the young man's spirit. Mirabeau, in after years, always spoke with great bitterness of M. de Lambert's discipline. He escaped from it on this occasion, and took refuge in Paris with his father's intimate friend, the duke de Nivernois. His brother-in-law, husband of his sister, the marquis du Saillant, mediated between him and his father: he defended himself against accumulated accusations. His father speaks of his defence as a mass of falsehood and ingratitude: he meditated, or, rather, was instigated, to send him to the Dutch colonies in India, but milder thoughts prevailed;—he would not kill, but only tame, as with blows, the fiery-spirited boy; so he caused him to be imprisoned in the fortress of the Isle de Rhé; and the youth felt that all the world was his enemy, and the chief his harsh implacable parent. In his eloquent letter to the marquis, written some years after, in the prison of Vincennes, he alludes with bitterness to this period of his existence.

"I may say," he writes, "that from my earliest years, and on my first entrance into life, I enjoyed few marks of your kindness; that you treated me with rigour before I could have merited it; and yet that you might have soon perceived that my natural impetuosity was excited, instead of repressed, by such treatment; that it was as easy to soften as to irritate me; that I yielded to the former, and rebelled against the latter. I was not born to be a slave; and, in a word, that, while Lambert ruined, Vioménil would have preserved me. Allow me also to remind you, that, before you restored me to your favour, you confessed in one of your letters that you had been on the point of sending me to one of the Dutch colonies. This made a profound impression, and influenced prodigiously the rest of my life. What had I done at eighteen to merit a fate the thought of which makes me tremble even now?—I had loved."

In his prison, Mirabeau acquired the friendship of the governor, whose mediation only added to his father's irritation. He was, however, induced to liberate him, and permit him to join an expedition to Corsica. He was entered as sub-lieutenant of foot in the regiment of Lorraine. The same mixture of wild passion, unwearied study, and eager aspiration for distinction, marked this period. He wrote a history of Corsica; he fabricated an itinerary of the island, founded on his personal inquiries and perambulations; the manuscript, the voluminousness of which testified his industry, were deemed of such value by the Corsicans themselves, that they desired its publication; but it was destroyed by the marquis. In addition, he studied his profession—he felt a vocation for a military life—the aspect of danger calmed his fiery spirit, and he was ambitious of glory—he dedicated all his time to the study of tactics, and declares that there was no book in any language, living or dead, that treated of the art of war that he had not read at this period, making, as he went on, voluminous extracts. In after times he wrote to his sister—"I deceive myself greatly, or I was born for a military life; for in war alone I feel cool, calm, gay, and without impetuosity, and I am sensible that my character grows exalted."

On returning from Corsica, he was allowed to visit his uncle, the bailli, at Mirabeau, and soon acquired the favour of this unprejudiced man, who was astonished by his talents, his industry, and his genius. His heart warmed, and the praises that overflowed had some effect on his father, still distrustful, still fearful of showing favour. The first mark of kindness which he gave was to insist that his son should throw aside all his favourite pursuits, and dedicate himself to political and agricultural economy, studying them in the works which he had himself written. Mirabeau, per force, obeyed, and thus somewhat propitiated his parent, so that he consented to see him during a visit he paid to Provence. He put the young man to hard trials, and made him labour indefatigably, preaching to him the while, and forcing political economy down his throat. The marquis was averse to his following the military profession, and by turning him from it plunged him in adversity. The excessive activity of Mirabeau's mind, and his physical vigour, could be satisfied in no other career: his exuberance of spirits and unwearied strength rendered every other vocation tame and trivial; however, he laboured at various occupations devised for him by his father, and was rewarded, at the earnest solicitation of all the relations, by being restored to his name—he having for some years gone by that of Pierre Buffière. His father was so far won by his manifestations of talent as to permit him to visit Paris, and pay his court at Versailles:—"He behaves very well," the marquis writes; "his manners are respectful without servility—easy, but not familiar. 1771.
Ætat.
22. The courtiers look on him as half mad, but say that he is cleverer than any of them, which is not discreet on his part. I do not intend that he shall live there, nor follow, like others, the trade of robbing or cheating the king: he shall neither haunt the dirty paths of intrigue, nor slide on the ice of favour; but he must learn what is going on: and if I am asked why I, who never would frequent Versailles, allow him to go so young, I reply that 'he is made of other clay.' For the rest, as, for 500 years, Mirabeau, who were never like the rest of the world, have been tolerated, he also will be endured, and he will not alter the reputation of the race."

This gleam of paternal favour was soon clouded over. Mirabeau himself accuses those around his father of inspiring him with distrust; but there was something in the young man's character that jarred with the father's, and produced a perpetual state of irritation and dissatisfaction. The self-will, pedantry, economy, and self-sufficiency of the marquis were in perpetual contradiction with the genius, activity, recklessness, the winning frankness and plausible fascinations of his son. In vain the youth transacted some troublesome business for his father with diligence and success—in vain he entered into his agricultural projects—the father writes bitterly, "His infancy was monstrous, his adolescence turbulent, and both seem the worthy exordium of his life, which is now a mixture of indiscretion, misconduct, and garrulity; and at the same time so turbulent, so presumptuous, and so heedless, that the enterprise of saving him from the dangers which his years and his character present, is enough to fatigue and deter thirty Mentors, instead of one." At length, tired of the young man's society, and urged by those about him, he sent him (December, 1771) to Mirabeau, to endeavour to pacify and regulate the dissensions subsisting among the tenants of the marquis, which his usual agents were incapable of rectifying. The young man fulfilled his task with zeal and ability: he became known and liked in Provence, and his success inspired the idea of settling him in marriage—so to calm down his turbulence in domestic life: his father had before entertained this project, believing that a woman of good sense would exercise the happiest influence over his mind.

The young lady pointed out was an heiress. A number of men of higher pretensions than himself on the score of fortune aspired to her hand. This circumstance, and the avarice of his father, who acted with his usual parsimony, at first deterred Mirabeau; but, urged on by the marquis's sarcasms, he exerted himself to overcome all difficulties and succeeded, though the measures he took, which compromised the reputation of the young lady, were highly reprehensible, and naturally excited the disgust and disapprobation of his father. 1772.
Ætat.
23. Marie Emilie de Covet, only daughter of the marquis de Marignane, was then eighteen: she was a lively brunette, scarcely to be called pretty, but agreeable, witty, and superficially clever. Although an heiress, she enjoyed a very slender fortune during the life of her father; and the marquis, while he entailed the family estate on his son, allowed him scarcely any income, and advanced him nothing for the expences of his nuptials. This was the worst sort of marriage that Mirabeau could have made. Marrying in his own province a girl of good family, and surrounded by the éclat that attends an heiress, he was led to desire to make an appearance suitable to his name and his father's fortune. He incurred debts. Madame de Sévigné remarks that there is nothing so expensive as want of money. Debt always begets debt. Mirabeau was constitutionally careless with regard to expense. His father lent him the chateau of Mirabeau to live in: he found the ancestral residence as furnished by his progenitors; and, obliged to make some repairs, he went to the other extreme, and fitted up the apartments destined for his wife with splendour. False pride caused him to load her with presents, and to dress her richly, in spite of her remonstrances. At the same time he had projects for the improvement of the culture of the estate, the proceeds of which, he believed, would cover all his expenses. His father still pursued the degrading plan of employing hirelings as spies over him. These men, to cover their own peculations, represented that he was selling the furniture of the chateau and injuring the property. Every plan Mirabeau formed to pay his debts, as the best foundation of retrenchment, was opposed by his father. Feeling the storm about to break, and resolved to proceed no further on the road to ruin, he commenced a system of rigid economy; but his father, deaf to all explanations, excited by the representations of his servants, and exasperated in the highest degree, obtained a lettre de cachet, and used it to order his son to quit the chateau, and to confine himself in the little town of Manosque. This sort of confinement was ill calculated to appease the spirit of Mirabeau, who ought rather to have been thrown into an arduous career, so to fill and occupy his mind. At Manosque he was reduced to a scanty income of about 50l. a year, to support himself, his wife, and child; his only employment was study, to which he gave himself up with ardour, but it was not sufficient to tame and engross him. He wrote here his "Essay on Despotism," a work full of passion and vigour, into which he poured his own impatience of control. He left behind him no good reputation among the people of Manosque; and, if his wife afterwards refused to join him, she had the excuse that his behaviour as a husband was such as to disgust any young lady of feeling and delicacy. His own conduct did not, however, prevent him from being jealous himself, and this passion, awakened toward his wife, renewed, by the actions it occasioned, the persecutions of his father.

A girlish and innocent correspondence had been carried on by his wife before her marriage with the chevalier de Gassaud. This, and other circumstances, combined to excite jealousy in the mind of the husband; a duel became imminent; till, pacified by the representations of the young man's family, and consideration for the reputation of Madame de Mirabeau, he became willing to listen to an explanation. The previous scandal, however, threatened to break an advantageous marriage, on foot between the chevalier and the daughter of the marquis de Tourette. Mirabeau, resolving not to be generous by halves, left Manosque secretly, and repaired with all possible speed to the town of Grasse: he pleaded the cause of the chevalier with such earnest eloquence that the family dismissed their objections, and he hastened to return to his place of exile.

Most unfortunately he met on his way back the baron de Villeneuve-Moans. This man had, a short time before, grossly insulted his sister, the marquise de Cabris. The brother demanded satisfaction, which being refused, he now, meeting him by accident, struck him. The baron proceeded legally against him, and thus his evasion from his place of exile came to light. 1774.
Ætat.
25. The implacable father demanded a stricter imprisonment; and Mirabeau, taken from his wife and his infant son, then dangerously ill, was conducted to the chateau of If, a dismal fortress, built on a naked rock by the sea-shore, near Marseilles. He was here at the demand of his father, interdicted all visits and correspondence; and the marquis also took the pains to write to the commander of the castle, Dallegre, exaggerating the faults of his son, and blackening his character; but here, as before in the Isle de Rhé, the commander was won by the frankness, courage, and fascinating qualities of his prisoner, and wrote to the marquis to entreat his liberation. "All the province knows," he wrote, "that you have made the freedom of the count de Mirabeau depend on the report I shall make of his good conduct. Receive, then, the most authentic attestation that, since the count has been confined at the chateau d'If, he has not given me, nor any other person, the slightest cause of complaint, and has always conducted himself admirably. He has sustained with extreme moderation the altercations I have sometimes entered into for the purpose of trying his temper, and he will carry away with him the esteem, friendship, and consideration of every one here." Madame de Mirabeau made a journey to Bignon to intercede with his father, who at length explained that his purpose was to try his son; that he meant to keep him yet longer in the chateau of If; and if, by a miracle, he committed no new fault, he should be transferred to some other fortress where his perseverance in a good course should continue to be put to the test, till by degrees he should be restored to his privileges of husband and father. When we consider that Mirabeau really filled these sacred functions, and that his sole crime towards his father was debt,—a crime the consequences of which visited him only, and visited him severely,—we revolt from the insolent tyranny exercised against him. 1775.
Ætat.
26. In pursuance of this plan, he was transferred to the fortress of Joux, near Pontarlier, and placed in the hands of the governor, count Saint-Mauris. He submitted to this new exile among the mountains of Jura, away from his wife and child, from every friend and connection, with entire resignation; still hoping, by patience and good conduct, to vanquish the prejudices and gain the good will of his father.

Until now we appear to detail a series of cruel and causeless persecutions. The conduct of Mirabeau, tried by the laws of morality, had been vicious, but not criminal, and was punished as the latter. He had, to a certain degree, redeemed his extravagance, by living for a considerable period within the limits of an income scarcely sufficient to afford the necessaries of life. He had obtained the favourable attestation of the man under whose guard he was placed: it was evident to every one, except his inexorable father, that the husband ought to be restored to the young wife, already suspected of indiscretion—the father to his child; a young man of ambition and talents, to the enjoyment of liberty and of the privileges of his birth.

Mirabeau painted his feelings eloquently in a letter to his uncle, dated from the fortress of Joux, 22d of August, 1775. "Ought I," he writes, "to be for ever excluded from a career in which my conduct and endeavours, aided by your counsels, might give me the means of one day becoming useful and known. Times are mending, and ambition is permitted. Do you believe that the emulation that animates me ought to remain sterile, and that, at the age of twenty-six, your nephew is incapable of any good? Do not believe it; deliver me; deign to deliver me: save me from the frightful agitation in which I live, and which may destroy the effects produced on me by reflection and adversity. Believe me, that there are men whom it is necessary to occupy, and that I am of that number. The activity which accomplishes all things, and without which nothing is achieved, becomes turbulent, and may become dangerous, if left without object or employment." His father was insensible to these representations, and, although the pretence of his continued imprisonment was, that he should regain by degrees the paternal favour, the marquis's letters prove that it was his heartfelt wish to drive his son to extremities; and he too fatally succeeded.

Mirabeau had hitherto wasted his ardent nature on vulgar amours; he had never felt real love. Had he been allowed to follow an active career, it is probable that love, in an absorbing and despotic form, had never governed him. Driven into solitude, separated from all the ties of nature, friendless and persecuted, his heart in an unfortunate hour became inflamed by a passion that sealed his ruin. The fortress of Joux is situated in the neighbourhood of Pontarlier; the only family of note resident in that town was that of De Monnier. Madame de Monnier belonged to a family of the name of Ruffey, distinguished for a piety carried to bigotry, and a parental severity, that caused them to devote several children to a monastic life. Sophie was married at eighteen to M. de Monnier, who was more than fifty years her senior. She joined to gentleness of disposition and sweetness of temper great decision and ardour of character. The young people became acquainted. She saw only the bright side of Mirabeau's character; and, while she consoled him in his misfortunes, she became entangled by the fascinations of passion. It is impossible to conceive a more unnatural position, than that of a girl sacrificed according to the old customs of France. Sophie de Ruffey was taken from the nursery, and given, even without her consent being asked, to a morose, avaricious, decrepit old man; who only married to annoy his daughter. He was unamiable in all the relations of life; and the home of the ardent girl was dull, and yet full of harassing cares. She had no children; none of the sweet hopes and expectations that ought to attend opening life; and, while she devoted herself to an existence full of ennui and annoyance, she reaped no reward in the kindness and confidence of her husband. It is not strange that, placed in this position, her heart should be open to impression, and before she knew her danger she was in love. The enthusiasm and fervour of her disposition caused her to exalt her lover into the idol of her imagination. Misled by passion, she began to regard her tie to her septuagenarian husband as criminal—fidelity and devotion to her lover as a paramount duty.

Mirabeau knew better what life was. He felt love for the first time in all its truth and intensity, and he trembled at the prospect. According to a wise poet,

"Love is too young to know what conscience is;
Yet who knows not that conscience is born of love?"

and thus he, who hitherto had looked on love as a mere sensual enjoyment, and who, accustomed to occupy himself in arduous study for the third of each day, had little leisure to employ in pursuits of empty gallantry, became aware of the absorbing nature of real passion, and to fear the misery that must ensue from its indulgence. He wrote letters of eloquent supplication, imploring to be removed from a neighbourhood which he found so dangerous: his father treated his appeals with contempt; he then wrote to his wife a long letter, entreating her to join him with their child, feeling that the presence of those who were united to him by such sacred ties would check his pursuit, and at once crush the affection of her he loved. Madame de Mirabeau was a frivolous and weak woman: a separation of more than a year had alienated her from her husband, whose conduct had been far from irreproachable, and she replied to his supplications by a dry note of a few lines, in which she treated him as out of his wits. Still Mirabeau struggled against the seductions of love, and had the unfortunate pair been treated, not to say with kindness, but with prudence, all had been well. It so happened that the governor, count de Saint-Mauris, who was nearly seventy years of age, was also in love with madame de Monnier, who had received his declarations with the disdain which they deserved. His rage knew no bounds, when he perceived the success of his prisoner. He roused the suspicions of the husband, and, the better to wreak his revenge, took advantage of his knowledge of a promissory note for a small sum, which Mirabeau, left in a state of destitution by his father, had been obliged to grant to procure necessary raiment, to report him to the implacable marquis as incurring new debts, and so obtained a fresh order to confine him strictly in the fortress of Joux. Mirabeau learnt the fate awaiting him, and finding that his system of resignation had availed him nothing, and shuddering at the prospect of a dungeon guarded by a malignant rival, escaped from his surveillance, and secreted himself at Pontarlier.

His position demanded the most careful reflection. His angry father spared no pains to discover his place of refuge: he wrote to Saint-Mauris, telling him to prepare a "healthy and dry, but well barred and bolted dungeon for his son; and not to permit him the slightest communication by writing or in person with any one." Hopeless of softening the marquis, Mirabeau wrote to Malesherbes, the minister so distinguished in France for benevolence and liberality; but Malesherbes mediated in vain with his father, and, at length, told Mirabeau that he had but one resource, which was to withdraw from his country, to enter foreign service, and pursue the career of arms, for which his birth, talents, and bravery, fitted him. Mirabeau was averse to renouncing his country; again and again he applied by letters, written either by himself or mediating friends, to his father, who at last replied, that he renounced having any thing to do with him—told him that no country was so foreign to him as his own; and, banishing him for ever from his family, dissolved all natural and social ties that still held his son to France.

Treated with this haughty cruelty, Mirabeau could not avoid contrasting the marks of hatred and scorn, which he received from every other, with the devoted love of her who was ready to sacrifice all to him. But, though conjugal fidelity was held in slight regard and little practised in France in those days, the carrying off a married woman was treated as a crime to be punished by death or perpetual imprisonment, and Mirabeau could not yet consent to lose himself or his mistress utterly. M. de Monnier, informed by Saint-Mauris of the attachment of his wife, surrounded her by spies, and treated her with the utmost severity. By the advice of Mirabeau she left her husband, and took refuge with her own family at Dijon. She found no kindness there; her angry father refused to see her—her mourning mother caused her to be strictly watched—her brother and sister taunted and insulted her. She was driven to despair, and declared to her lover that she would destroy herself, if by no other means she could escape the cruelty shown by all around. For several months Mirabeau combated the passion rooted in his own heart, and that which drove madame de Monnier to desperation. He had escaped from France and gained the frontier: he might easily have now entered on a military career in a foreign state, but devoted love bound him to Sophie, who was on the eve of being imprisoned in a convent, and who, revolting from such tyranny, believed that every genuine duty and affection of life bound her to him she loved, and had become resolved to devote her life to him. After much hesitation, many months spent in wanderings in Switzerland, dogged close the while by emissaries of his father, whose pursuit he baffled, and whose strength and patience he wearied out; after many fruitless endeavours to avoid the catastrophe, the hour at last arrived, when Mirabeau, cast off by father, wife, and country, doomed to exile and a career dependent on his industry, and feeling in the affection of his mistress his only solace in this accumulation of disaster, and assured also that, if he deserted her, Sophie, driven to desperation, would destroy herself, consented to their flight. 1777.
Ætat.
27. She escaped from her husband's house and joined him at Verrières Suisses, whence, after a fortnight's delay, they proceeded to Holland. On the 7th of October they arrived at Amsterdam, and took a lodging at the house of a tailor, where, destitute and friendless, Mirabeau was at once forced to earn their daily bread, and to conceal his name and identity, so to escape further persecution. He sought for occupation in translating for a bookseller. After some delay he obtained work from Rey, and was able to earn a louis a-day by means of extreme hard labour. From six in the morning till nine in the evening he was at his desk: his only recreation was an hour of music: but the lovers were happy together. Sophie, fallen from a life of ease to one of privation, yet regarded it no sacrifice to exchange annoyance and ennui, though surrounded by luxury, for seclusion with one whose ardent affection, brilliant imagination, and entire confidence, could easily supply every void, and fill her existence with interest and delight.

The social law that bound Sophie to her husband was nefarious and unnatural; but in breaking it she devoted herself to all the misfortunes which attend an attachment not sanctioned by society: for a time love may gild the scene, and, as was the case with Sophie, conscience be satisfied that she had a right to exchange her forced ties with a decrepit old husband, to whom she owed nothing, for a union with the man of her choice. But the world and its laws dog the heels of a felicity they condemn, and are sure at last to hunt down their prey. M. de Monnier proceeded against his wife and her lover in a court of law, and on the 10th May, 1777, sentence was passed on Mirabeau for rape and seduction. He was condemned to be decapitated in effigy and to pay 40,000 livres as damages to the husband; while Sophie was condemned to be confined for life in a house of refuge established at Besançon, to be shaven and branded in common with the other prisoners, who were girls of depraved life, and to lose all the advantages of her marriage settlement. Such was the severity of the old French laws against matrimonial infidelity—laws which permitted the most depraved state of society ever known, and only made themselves felt in eases of exception, when the most severe moralist would find excuses for, and be inclined to pardon the errors of passion, which society punished only because the victims refused to practise the hypocrisy which would have been accepted as atonement.

The marquis de Mirabeau at first rejoiced in the catastrophe which exiled his son for ever from the soil of France, and was willing to forget his existence. Not so the family of Sophie: her mother, induced by mixed feelings of religion, resentment, and even affection, was eager to obtain possession of the person of her daughter, to separate her from her lover, and induce her by severity or persuasion to return to her husband. Through an imprudence the place of their retreat was discovered, and the marquis writes to his brother, "He is in Holland, and lives on the earnings of his pen. De Brugnierres is setting out to fulfil a bargain made with madame de Ruffey, to seize her mad daughter, for which he is to be paid 100 louis. I have profited by the occasion and made the same arrangement—to be paid only if the man is taken to his destination."

1777.
Ætat.
28.

Mirabeau and his companion had lived eight months at Amsterdam: they had made friends; and some among these told them that their retreat was discovered, and an arrest impending. At first a treaty had been commenced to induce Mirabeau to place madame de Monnier in the hands of the French authorities, offering money and liberty as his reward: he spurned these propositions and prepared to fly with her to America; yet still the lovers were too secure, and delayed for the sake of obtaining a sum of money. The very night on which they were to depart they were arrested. Sophie, who, till the crisis arrived, was calm and serene, though serious and resolved, was seized by despair: she resolved to destroy herself. Mirabeau was her stay: he gained the goodwill of the men about them, revealed his fears, and obtained the consent of M. le Noir, lieutenant-general of police, to see her once, and afterwards to correspond with her. His persuasions were all powerful, and she consented to live. She was taken to Paris and imprisoned in a sort of asylum for women, while Mirabeau was shut up in the donjon of Vincennes. At first no gleam of hope lighted on the prisoners: all that bound them to existence was the correspondence they kept up with each other, and the fact that Sophie was about to give birth to a child. The letters that Mirabeau wrote to his mistress from his prison fell afterwards into the hands of a man who published them: certainly Mirabeau would have been the last person in the world to have permitted the publication of letters intended for the eye of his mistress alone, and drawn from a nature whose paramount vice was excess of passion, now wrought to intensity by close imprisonment and enforced separation from her whom he ardently loved. These letters are in parts grossly indelicate and unfit for perusal; but they display the burning ardour of his nature, and the excess of his attachment for the unhappy woman whom he had drawn into participation in his wretched destiny. For nearly two years these letters are stamped with a hopelessness, often carried to desperation.

"There is no peace with my implacable enemies," he writes, at one time; "there will be none except in the tomb. No pity can enter their souls of gall: as barbarous as they are unjust, their commiseration will never yield that which their iniquity denies. It is too much! I know not whether, proscribed by that destiny which permits guilt to triumph, and innocence to suffer, I am destined to die of despair, or to merit my fate by the perpetration of crime, but the agony that precedes the catastrophe endures too long, and I feel transports of indignation and hatred, such as never before had influence over my soul." Again he writes, "The rules of this house are so excessively, I had almost said so atrociously severe, that I must perish if I remain longer. No species of society is permitted: the turnkeys who wait on us are forbidden to remain in our cells, or to speak to us—we have but one hour of exercise out of the twenty-four. Alone with sorrow—no literary occupation—few and bad books—interminable delays in the fulfilment of our most innocent wishes and our simplest wants—no musical instruments—in a word, no recreation—every consolation denied by a barbarous tyranny, such is but a feeble sketch of our situation. A man who has any soul or mind cannot resist such a mode of life, in which his talents, his acquirements, and his most praiseworthy sentiments, instead of solacing, must produce his ruin."

As a proof of the energy and fortitude of Mirabeau's soul, it must be mentioned, that frequent opportunities of escape presented themselves, but he declared that he would not desert Sophie and unlink his fate from hers; nor renounce all hope of being restored to his station and rights in his country. While he strung his soul to endure, his very strength of purpose gave additional force to his hatred of tyranny. He, as being the victim of his family, and not a state prisoner, was in the sequel permitted many indulgences not allowed to any other. Books materials for writing—connivance at his correspondence—more time allowed to his walks—the visits of some of the superiors, who became his friends—such were the licences permitted him; but we find him complaining that he was forbidden to sing in his cell, and detailing the frightful physical sufferings, to which he was the victim through confinement. A state prisoner would have been treated with yet greater rigour; and the sense of this, and the knowledge that others whose crimes were often their virtues, were his fellow-sufferers, lighted up a horror of despotism in his heart, which made him ever after its determined and bitter enemy.

With all his energy and fortitude, Mirabeau bore up with difficulty under the hardships of his dungeon: at one time, he resolved on suicide, and was saved only by the remonstrances of M. le Noir, whose kindness to his prisoner was zealous and unalterable. Consenting to live, he found study his sole resource, and he dedicated himself with ardour, and to the injury of his health, to his pen. His works during his imprisonment were numerous. He translated the "Kisses" of Johannes Secundus, with abundant notes, containing extracts from all the erotic poets of antiquity. He wrote a treatise on mythology; an essay on the French language; another on ancient and modern literature; works undertaken for the instruction and amusement of madame de Monnier. His "Essay on Lettres-de-cachet and State Prisons" belongs also to this period.

His father, meanwhile, felt no compunction, no doubt as to the justice of his conduct; no pity softened his heart, nor did he by any notice of his son answer his many supplications. He declared that, having searched and purified his heart each day before God, he is only the more determined to persist; and the resolution in which he was to persist was that of suffering his son to languish and perish in his dungeon. Oct.
8.
1778.
Ætat.
29. A circumstance happened, however, to change this resolve. His grandson, the only son of Gabriel-Honoré, died. The mother resided with her child at her father's chateau. She was surrounded by relations, collateral heirs to her fortune if she died childless: some suspicion arose that these persons had poisoned the boy; he was five years old, and of great promise from the sweetness and docility of his disposition. The grandfather was deeply afflicted: he could not doubt the uprightness of his conduct nor the purity of his motives, so blinded was he by the passions that urged him to persecute his family; but he was led to doubt the support of Providence on which he had heretofore relied. From this moment he began to meditate the liberation of his son. He was not induced by justice nor compassion, but by pride: he could not endure that the name of Mirabeau should be extinguished. "I reflected," he wrote afterwards to his brother, "for a long time. It is certain that, if my grandson had not died, I had insisted on the maintenance of the promise made me, to keep the father in prison, and even to destroy all trace of him. But, after the death of our poor little Victor, I found that you felt as I did with regard to the extinction of our race; for, however one may argue, however one may submit and resign one's self, a feeling once entertained cannot be effaced." The marquis, however, proceeded fair and softly in his design. Resolved both to punish and to tame his son, he issued fresh orders, that he should be allowed no indulgences; but he put several persons in action, through whose suggestions Mirabeau commenced a correspondence with his uncle: the letters were shown to his father, and some were addressed to the latter; but he was not moved either by the protestations or representations they contained to move faster or to alter his plan. In pursuance of this, he declared that the liberation of his son depended on the intercession of his wife. The countess de Mirabeau accordingly wrote to her father-in-law, requesting that her husband should be set free; and Mirabeau, hearing this, was touched by the generosity of her act. From the moment, indeed, that hope gleamed on him of softening his father's resolves, he became much more humble, and very ready to acknowledge his faults. Sophie, also, with that generous ardour of disposition that was at once the cause and excuse of her actions, wrote to the marquis, taking all the fault of their attachment and flight on herself. Even the old economist felt the nobleness of her conduct.

The affair, however, still lagged. M. de Marignane detested his son-in-law. It was the interest of the relations around to prevent the reunion of husband and wife: the countess was a weak and timid woman; she resolved never to disobey, she feared to offend her father; and besides, living as she did, in the midst of ease, luxury, pleasure, and freedom, she had no wish to return to a life of penury with a husband whom she no longer loved. Often, therefore, while receiving harsh letters from his uncle, Mirabeau was ready to sink under multiplied delays. He tried to cheat time by occupation; he gave himself up to study—he learnt Greek, English, Italian, Spanish—translated a portion of Tacitus—and this, in spite of failing eyes and ruined health.

May,
1780.
Ætat.
31.

Another event, sad to a parent's heart, and deeply lamented by Mirabeau, happened to facilitate his freedom. His child, the daughter of Sophie, died of a fever of dentition: this event acted as a spur to the marquis. He permitted his only child with whom he was on friendly terms, madame du Saillant, to correspond with her brother, dictating her letters, and reading the replies—he allowed (for no step was taken except by his permission, and even suggestion,) his son-in-law, M. du Saillant, to offer to become his surety. And, at last, after many disappointments and delays, he gave the signal, and the prison gates were opened.

Dec.
13.
1780.
Ætat.
31.

It was impossible to avoid giving the details of this unfortunate portion of Mirabeau's life. Forty-one months spent in a dungeon forms too important an epoch in a man's existence for a biographer to pass it over; or to shun the detail of the causes and effects. Forty-one months of solitude and privation—of alternate hopes and fears wound to their highest pitch—of arduous study—of excessive physical suffering—must colour a human being's whole after-existence. The devoted love of Sophie ennobled his sufferings. She erred—but her error was redeemed by her heroism and self-abnegation. Resolved in her own thoughts that she was not the wife of the poor old man to whom her parents had forced her to give her hand, but of him who possessed her heart, she believed it to be her duty to bear all rather than concede. That her too ardent nature required the stay of religion cannot be denied, but her generosity and heroism are undoubted, and shed a grace over details which would otherwise he revolting.[11]

Mirabeau quitted his prison, eager to gain his father's good will, and redeem himself in the eyes of the world. He stept out, from so long a series of suffering and imprisonment, with a spirit as vigorous and free as in boyhood. All were astonished by his mingled gentleness and vivacity; his submission to his father, joined to reliance in his own powers. Some months passed before the marquis would see him, but, when he did, he expressed himself to his brother in more favourable terms than he had ever before done. Occupied in the task of reforming, he even began to praise him. It is to be remarked, that the interloper in the family, madame du Pailly, was absent at this time, and the son was allowed to make his own way with his father.

The end of all the marquis's actions was to reunite his son to his wife. This was a matter of difficulty, and the greater on account of the sentence pronounced against Mirabeau at Pontarlier, on occasion of his flight with madame de Monnier. Many plans were projected to get rid of this sentence; the readiest was, to obtain letters of abolition from the king. But Mirabeau refused a line of conduct which would have saved him only; he was determined that his cause should not be separated from that of Sophie. 1782.
Ætat.
33. With a resolution worthy of his impetuous and energetic nature, he surrendered, and constituted himself prisoner at Pontarlier while the cause was again tried. He was counselled to take the line of a timid defence, but he refused. Convinced of the irregularity of his trial, and the want of all judicial proof against him, he met the most imminent danger calmly and resolutely. His father writes:—"His conduct is firm, and his position as advantageous as possible. He is praised for his nobleness and audacity in the singular tone of his appeal against a capital sentence. Now that I see him in saddle, he holds himself well, and has this real advantage with the public, of entirely exculpating his accomplice, on which he is resolved at all events. You have no idea of what your nephew is on great occasions." Nor did the imprisonment of months in an unhealthy and narrow dungeon move him. When his father desired to attempt measures of conciliation with the adversary, he declared that the view of the scaffold under his window would not make him accept any propositions while in prison. "I have said to my father," he wrote to his brother-in-law, M. du Saillant, "and I repeat to you, that, before God and man, no one has a right to interfere in my affairs against my will, my consent, my opinion; and with this firm conviction I declare, that I will consent to no accommodation until former proceedings are reversed; and I will sign nothing in which my simple and entire acquittal, that of madame de Monnier, the restitution of her dowery, an annuity for her, and the payment of my own expenses, are not comprised." His memoirs and defence are eloquent and resolute, and in them first shone forth that brilliant genius which afterwards ruled France.

At length an accommodation on his own terms, with the exception of the pecuniary condition that regarded himself, was completed. Mirabeau left his prison on the 14th of August, 1782. He left it, indeed, a beggar and in debt; his father denied him every assistance, and refused, in opprobrious terms, to become his surety. His courage sank under these misfortunes; he wrote to his sister, "I am free, but to what use shall I put my liberty? Disowned by my father; forgotten, hated perhaps by my mother, for having desired to serve her; avoided by my uncle; watched for by my creditors, not one of whom has been paid, though I have been deprived of the means of subsistence under the pretence of satisfying them; menaced by my wife, or those who govern her; destitute of every thing—income, career, credit—O! that it pleased God that my enemies were not as cowardly as they are malicious, and a thrust of a sword would end all!"

To please his family and obtain an income, Mirabeau next entered into a law-suit to force his wife to become reconciled with him. This was an unworthy act. In the pleadings, where he stood forth as his own advocate, he exerted an overwhelming eloquence, that silenced his adversaries, and drew an immense audience of gentry belonging to Provence to the hall where the trial was carried on. He however failed, and a decree of separation was passed in the law courts of Provence, and confirmed in Paris.[12] By this time the marquis had become as inveterate as ever against his son: he did not imprison him, but he kept the royal order, permitting him to assign him his place of residence, hanging over his head, so to be able to remove him from his own vicinity if he became troublesome.

Mirabeau felt the necessity of forming a career for himself, and earning a subsistence. He failed in his first attempts in Paris, and, as a last resource, turned his eyes towards England. 1784.
Ætat.
35. His visit to London, however, was full of mortification and disappointment. He found no path open by which a French author could maintain himself. His letters are full of bitterness at this period; his father refused him the slightest provision, and, he says, used all his address to cause him to die of hunger, since he could not hope to make him rob on the highway. It is difficult for those who live in the sunshine of life, as well as for those who are brought up to earn their bread in a profession, or by trade, to understand the degree of exasperation engendered in the heart of a rich man's son, reduced to penury by the injustice of his parent. He finds it impossible to make money of his talents, and indignities, unknown to the merest labourer, swarm around him. It is much if he can earn a bare and precarious subsistence, eaten into by previous debts, and dependent on the selfishness and caprice of others. Mirabeau tasted of the dregs of poverty; his natural inaptitude to calculation increased his difficulties; he was generous and profuse, even when what he gave or spent reduced him to absolute want.

1785.
Ætat.
36.

On his return to France, he found the public mind engrossed by questions of political finance. Mirabeau entered on the discussion with his accustomed eagerness. He published several pamphlets, which attracted general attention and added to his notoriety. The minister Calonne at first made use of his pen, but they afterwards disagreed. Under his patronage, Mirabeau endeavoured to get diplomatic employment in Germany. He visited Berlin at the period of Frederic the Great's death, and several times subsequently. His correspondence from Berlin is not, however, worthy of his character or genius. It was not published at this time; he kept it back till 1789, when, under the necessity of acquiring money to carry on the expenses of his election in Provence, he had no other resource except bringing out a book, sure to acquire notoriety from the scandalous anecdotes it contained, but not adapted to sustain the credit of the author. His pamphlets on finance, which attacked that system of gambling in the public funds, called, in France, agiotage, which, while it enriches individuals, is ruinous to the country, deserve the highest praise for their utility. They, however, attacked powerful interests; and one of them was suppressed by a decree of government, and even his personal liberty was menaced. 1787.
Ætat.
38. He saved himself by a timely retreat to Liege. He here entered into a financial controversy with Necker, which was rendered the more conspicuous by the allusions made by Mirabeau to the necessity of assembling the states-general and establishing a constitution. The convocation of notables, which occurred during this year, was a sort of commentary on his views. He expected to be named secretary to the assembly, but that place was given to Dupont de Nemours; and, when he returned to Paris in September, the notables were already dismissed. Mirabeau, in his letters at this period, displays that deep interest in politics which afterwards was to engross his life, and led to his success and triumph. "It is impossible," he writes, "to witness the excess of shame and folly which combine to engulf my country without consternation. It is not given to human wisdom to guess where all this will find a term." Meanwhile his pen was never idle; and in the midst of various journeys, and multiplied occupations, he published a variety of political works, which drew public observation on him; though now for the most part they are forgotten, as belonging to a state of things sunk in perpetual oblivion. In these he never ceased to attack the abuses of government; to urge the necessity of framing a constitution for his country; and to announce with enthusiasm his love of political liberty and independence.

In the history of Mirabeau, so far, we find his life divided into two parts. The first, up to the age of two and thirty, was stormy and disastrous; but the accidents that marked it did not take him from private life. Proud of his station and name, and ambitious of distinction, yet the vices of youth wrecked him at the very outset, and the conduct of his father, who acted the part of Cornish wrecker, rather than taking his natural post of pilot, threatened his perpetual submersion. As lord Brougham observes, in his observations on his character, "There is, perhaps, no second instance of an individual whose faults have been committed under such a pressure of ill-treatment, to besiege and force his virtue, rather than of temptation, to seduce and betray it." The extraordinary energy of his character alone saved him; and he merited the praise, not only of delivering himself, through his resolute and unwearied exertions, from the dungeon in which, had he been a weaker man, he had been left to perish, but also of making good use of the leisure which the sad and solitary hours of imprisonment afforded, to store his mind with knowledge.

In the second portion of his life, till the election of deputies for the states-general, he was no longer pursued by private enemies; and his passions, though they were not sobered, yet, not being violently opposed, no longer afforded a topic for public scandal. At first, he chiefly endeavoured to obtain a maintenance, since his father's parsimony reduced him to indigence. His pride and fortitude continued to support him in so hard a trial. We have no instance of any application of his for help from the rich and powerful—he was extravagant, but never mean; and he could labour industriously without stooping to any dishonourable shifts. By degrees he acquired such name and esteem among men in power as induced them to employ him in public services. Then, as the political atmosphere of France became overcast, and the howlings of the coming tempest audible, Mirabeau felt within himself that the hour was approaching when he should acquire greatness. He had displayed his wonderful power of public speaking, during his law-suit with his wife, some years before: the recollection of the effects produced by his forcible and impetuous eloquence, which almost gained his cause against reason and justice, gave foundation to his hopes of distinction, if he should be allowed to speak for the public cause. These feelings did not make him weakly eager to put himself forward; he was calm in the knowledge of his power. "Leave me, then, in my obscurity," he wrote, in 1787, to the satellite of a minister,—"I say, in my obscurity, for it is really my design to remain unalterably in it, until a regular order of things arises from the present state of tumult, and till some great revolution, either for good or ill, enjoins a good citizen, who is always accountable for his suffrage and even his talents, to raise his voice. This revolution cannot be long delayed. The public vessel is in a strait, equally short and difficult. An able pilot could doubtless guide it into the open sea; but he cannot, without the consent of the crew, and at this moment no one sailor can be despised."

Mirabeau deserves the praise of keeping at this season far above all petty traffic of his influence and pen. He saw the safety and glory of France, and the rise of a national constitution, in the opposition of the parliament to the court, and in the consequent necessity of assembling the states-general. He represented these convictions to the minister Montmorin, but without avail; on the contrary, Montmorin earnestly requested him to undertake his defence, and to attack the parliament. Mirabeau, in reply, set before the minister the errors of his views, and refused, with dignity, the task offered him. "Do not," he concludes, "compromise a zealous servant, who will despise danger when called upon to devote himself for his country, but who would not, even for the price of all earthly crowns, prostitute himself in an equivocal cause, the aim of which is uncertain, the principle doubtful, and the progress fearful and dark. Should I not lose all the little talent of which you exaggerate the influence, if I renounced that inflexible independence which alone gains me success, and which only can render me useful to my country and my king? When the day arrives, when, animated by my conscience, and strong in my conviction, an honourable citizen, a faithful subject, an honest writer, I cast myself into the melée, I shall be able to say, 'Listen to a man who has never varied in his principles, nor deserted the public cause.'"

And it must be remarked, in honour of Mirabeau, when doubts are cast upon his subsequent career, that, at the moment that he refused the aid of his pen to a powerful minister, he was suffering the extreme of penury, aggravated by its being shared by a dear friend. When, therefore, he afterwards accepted the pay of the court, we may believe, unworthy as was the act, that he compromised no principle; but, though a reformer, not being a republican, the support he engaged to give to the king had the suffrage of his conscience.

1788.
Ætat.
39.

The reputation of Mirabeau was now at its height; but, though his genius was acknowledged, he was not esteemed a good member of society. It is strange on what reputation depends: it may seem a paradox to say, that it often depends on modesty. Notoriety, and even success, may follow the unblushing man; but the good word of our fellow-creatures clings rather to him whose worth is crowned by the graceful and conciliating virtue of modesty. Mirabeau had been oppressed—he had suffered much; his ostensible errors were venial, and such as many a man might have committed without entire condemnation; but the publicity that attended them, and the readiness with which he exposed his faults, and his family persecution, to public view, displeased and offended. He was feared as a false friend, as well as a dangerous enemy. Yet, wherever he appeared, he gained the hearts of those whom he addressed. He had the art of rendering himself agreeable and fascinating to all. The truth is that, though in theory and absence, we may approve the unblameable, the torpid, and the coldly good, our nature forces us to prefer what is vivacious, exhilarating, and original. This is the secret of the influence exercised by men, whose biographers labour to excuse and to account for the spontaneous ebullitions of sympathy and affection that follow their steps. Mirabeau was easy, complaisant, gay, and full of animation and variety in his conversation; he had, in a supreme degree, what his father named the dangerous gift of familiarity. It was his delight to cast aside all etiquette, and to reduce his intercourse to the interchange of the real emotions of the heart and expression of ideas, unaccompanied by any disguise or conventional refinements;—for this, he did not scruple to appear at times rude and even vulgar; but also by this he inspired confidence, as being frank and true.

At length, the hour long expected, long desired, came, when the states-general were convoked by a royal decree of the 27th December, 1788. Mirabeau passionately desired to belong to the assembly; and, relying on the popularity which he enjoyed in his native province, departed for Aix early in the following month. 1789.
Ætat.
40. The nobles and high clergy of Provence were vehemently opposed to the changes they apprehended in government, and were zealously wedded to the privileges of their order. They entered a protest against certain portions of the royal decree which threw power into the hands of the people. When Mirabeau arrived among them as the partisan of the dawning liberty of his country, he was received as an enemy. He raised his voice against the protest, and naturally took his place at the head of the liberal party. The nobles commenced their attack against him by excluding him from among them, on the pretext that he did not (as an elder son merely) possess any fief. Mirabeau protested against this exclusion, as well in his own name as in those of every other in a similar situation with himself; but in vain. On the 8th of the following February, in an assembly of the nobles, on the proposition of the marquis de Fare, his exclusion was pronounced, as not possessing either estate or fief in Provence. Mirabeau spared neither pamphlets nor speeches on the occasion; though, occupied by the calls made on him by his party during the day, he could only give the hours of night to composing and publishing. "I do not write a line," he says, in one of his letters, of the date of the 8th February, "that I am not interrupted thirty times, and to such a degree, that I can only labour at public affairs by night. You know what cardinal de Retz said:—'The chief hinderance of the head of a party is his party.' A thousand minor annoyances, a thousand important arrangements, a thousand inevitable interruptions, deprive me, during the day, of all presence of mind to compose, and of all coherence of ideas and style."

Besides these labours, he had the more difficult task of keeping clear of brawls and duels among a class of men whose dearest wish was to provoke him to the committal of an outrage. Proud and arrogant themselves, they hoped to taunt one yet prouder into some deed of violence that would give them the advantage over him. But haughty as Mirabeau was, he was yet wiser; the peculiarity of his genius was a quick perception of the proper line of conduct, and he preserved his dignity, while he showed himself forbearing.

He had to meet yet another difficulty. He published his correspondence from Berlin at this moment, for the purpose of acquiring the funds necessary for his election: this work was condemned to be burnt, by the parliament. It had been published anonymously; but, as the name of the author was well known, Mirabeau saw himself forced to make a journey to Paris, for the purpose of silencing his enemies, and giving courage to his friends, who quailed under the attacks made against him. This journey and short absence served but to raise to enthusiasm the favour with which he was regarded by the population of Provence. Deputations of the bourgeoisie of Marseilles and Aix met him on his return, with all the manifestations of affection and joy which the people of the south render so cordial and demonstrative. The road he traversed was strewn with flowers; fireworks were let off; a crowd of 50,000 persons assembled round his carriage, while cries of "Vive Mirabeau!" rent the air. No noble dared show himself in the streets. "If you hate oppression as much as you love your friends," Mirabeau said to the assembled citizens, "you will never be oppressed." He was, within a few days after, received with similar demonstrations at Marseilles: 120,000 inhabitants filled the streets to welcome him; two louis were paid for a window to look on him—his carriage was covered with laurels—the people kissed the wheels—the women brought their children to him. Mirabeau, who saw, in his elevation in the public favour, the stepping stone to success, beheld these demonstrations with proud delight; they were the signals of his triumph over the party who trampled on him—over that series of adversity which, from his cradle to that hour, had never ceased to crush him. The report, carefully spread, that this triumph had been got up by his friends, vanished before the fact that the whole population were his friends, and that the getting up was merely his assent to receive the marks of their enthusiastic favour. That he had done his best to curry favour with the people is true: that fault abides with him, if it be one.

Among other manœuvres he had, it is said, opened a clothier's shop at Marseilles. There is no foundation for this story, although Marat, and other partisans of equality of his own day, asserted it. He had been obliged, indeed, to make himself free of the town, when candidate for the deputyship. His only chance was to make friends with the people. He was treated with contumely by the nobles; and even now his triumph was not devoid of drawback, occasioned by the indignities cast on him by the class to which he properly belonged: their insults did not fail to sting his pride, and rouse him to revenge, even while he successfully preserved himself from open quarrelling.

The popularity he acquired he was soon called upon to exert. M. Caraman, military commander in Provence, applied to him to allay the disturbances occasioned by a scarcity. The nobles regarded the pending famine as a means of taming the people; and the same marquis de Fare, who had originated the exclusion of Mirabeau from the assembly, insolently exclaimed,—"Do the people hunger?—let them eat the dung of my horses." Such a speech, and such a spirit, manifested by the wealthy, naturally exasperated the poor. The weakness of the magistrates, who decreed so great a reduction in the price of food that the traders could no longer afford to sell it, only augmented the public peril: the granaries were pillaged,—blood was spilt in the streets. At the request of M. de Caraman, Mirabeau stept forward,—he persuaded the governor to withdraw the soldiery,—he induced the bourgeois youth to take arms to keep the peace. His eloquence, the credit given to his sincerity and good intentions, pacified the people, and first at Marseilles, and afterwards at Aix, he restored peace and security. At this period, while he fulfilled the noble part of pacificator and of a citizen, powerful only through the influence of his genius and patriotism, he was elected, both by Marseilles and Aix, deputy of the tiers état in the approaching assembly of the states-general. He gave the preference to the latter, as circumstances rendered it doubtful whether his election for Marseilles would be admitted by his colleagues.

We now arrive at the epoch when he developed the whole force of his genius, and acquired immortality, as the great leader of a revolution which, at its first outbreak, commanded the sympathy and respect of the world which looked on; beholding with gladness and hope the overthrow of feudal abuses, and the restoration of the oppressed majority of the French nation to the rights of men and citizens.

The first steps that Mirabeau trod towards greatness were taken on slippery ground. The eyes of the crowd sought for him with avidity, during the procession of the king and states-general to the church of St. Louis, on the 4th May. He appeared, with his dark shaggy hair, his beetling brows, and luminous eyes, stepping proudly on. A murmur of disapprobation was raised;—he looked round, and all was silent; yet in that moment he felt the struggle, the combat that would ensue: his fiery nature made him also, perhaps, rely on victory. When the names of the deputies were called over, and those of other popular men were applauded, hisses of disapprobation followed his. They did not daunt him: he walked across the chamber to his place with an air of resolution and haughtiness that spoke of perseverance and vigour in the coming struggle.

To give himself notoriety and weight, he commenced by publishing a journal of the proceedings of the chambers. This publication was seized by government, and he then changed its title to that of letters to his constituents. He excited animosity by this publication in the chamber itself, but it added to his weight and influence.

The first combat of the tiers état with the two other chambers is well known. They demanded that their consultations should be held in common, while the noblesse and clergy desired each their chamber, secure that the lower one would be crushed by the union of the two higher with the king. Mirabeau, at first, recommended that system of passive resistance which is all powerful when resorted to resolutely by numbers. During the interval that succeeded, Mirabeau had an interview with Necker, by the desire of his friend Duroverai; but it availed nothing. Mirabeau regarded Necker as a weak man, though he acknowledged his unimpeachable honesty; and he was soon after carried far beyond any necessity of recurring to his patronage for advancement, when, by echoing the voices of many men, and giving expression and direction to their passions, his eloquence filled France with the cry of liberty, and gave power and authority to the hesitating deputies.

He met with a check, when the name he wished the assembly of tiers état to assume (deputies of the people) was rejected, with ill-founded indignation. The term people was regarded as disgraceful and humiliating. "The nation," he wrote on this occasion, "is not ripe; the folly and frightful disorder of the government have forced the revolution as in a hotbed; it has outgrown our aptitude and knowledge. When I defended the word people, I had nearly been torn to pieces. It was circulated that I had gone over to the government:—truly I am said to have sold myself to so many, that I wonder I have not acquired a universal monarchy with the money paid for me."

The resolution of the tiers état, now naming themselves the national assembly, excited mingled contempt and alarm. The nobility protested against their assumption, and the king was counselled to oppose their resolves by a royal decree; the hall of the deputies was closed, under pretence of preparing for the royal visit; the deputies adjourned to a neighbouring tennis court, and took a solemn oath to stand by each other to the last. On the following day, the 23d of June, the seance royale had place, and the decree promulgated that the three orders should vote separately. Satisfied that this exertion of royal power would tame at once the rebellious deputies, the royal cortege—the ministers, the nobles, and the clergy—left the chamber; the tiers état, the self-constituted national assembly, remained. A gloomy silence ensued, broken by Mirabeau, who rose, and, warning them of the danger to be apprehended, added, "I demand of you to seek shelter in your dignity and legislative powers, and that you take refuge in the faith of your oath, which does not allow you to separate till you have formed a constitution." The grand master of ceremonies, de Brézé, now entered, for the purpose of dispersing the deputies, saying, that they had heard the orders of the king. The president, Bailly, replied that he would take those of the assembly. At that moment, on which the public cause hung,—for on the boldness and perseverance of the deputies depended their success,—at that moment of hesitation, Mirabeau rose, and with a manner full of majesty, and a calm voice, he replied, "The commons of France intend to deliberate. We have heard what your king has been advised to say, but you, sir, cannot be his interpreter to the national assembly; you have neither place, nor voice, nor right to speak here. But, to prevent delay, go tell your master, that we are here by the power of the people; and that the power of the bayonet alone shall drive us out."

Victor Hugo, in his essay on the character of Mirabeau, remarks, that these words sealed the fate of the monarchy of France. "They drew a line between the throne and the people; it was the cry of the revolution. No one before Mirabeau dared give it voice. Great men only pronounce the words that decide an epoch. Louis XVI. was afterwards more cruelly insulted, but no expression was used so fatal and so fearful as that of Mirabeau. When he was called Louis Capet, royalty received a disgraceful blow; but, when Mirabeau spoke, it was struck to the heart."[13]

The immediate effect of this outburst was, first, that de Brézé, losing all presence of mind, backed out of the chamber, and the deputies, electrified by the audacity of their self-constituted leader, arose with acclamations, and passed a decree to confirm his words.

The national assembly, which by law was attached to the person of the king, sat at Versailles; the distance from Paris was short, and the capital regarded with growing interest the actions of the deputies. Crowds assembled in the streets, and various tumults ensued: these have been variously attributed to different factions, which excited the people for the purpose of carrying on their own designs. There does not seem much foundation for that opinion; the public cause, the natural turbulence of the Parisians, which had been manifested during every reign of past times; the heat and agitation of the crisis, easily account for the alarming tumults in the metropolis. The chief suspicion at the time rested on the party of the duke of Orléans. Mirabeau did not belong to this; he had no connection with the leaders of the mob; his impracticable and vehement character kept him aloof from coalition with others. He was not sufficiently trusted to be selected as chief, he disdained any other post; feeling that, without descending to manœuvre and consultations, his energy, eloquence, and presence of mind, would place him in the van of war. He remained, therefore, independent; uneasy when others obtained influence in the assembly, visiting Paris as a looker on, and waiting his time, which soon came. For it must be remembered, that, at this period, notwithstanding the distinguished part he had acted, Mirabeau's supremacy was by no means acknowledged. There was a large party against him, and Barnave was held up by it as the more eloquent and greater man. The errors of his youth were remembered, and a thousand calumnies spread abroad against him; the people were even influenced by them, and though, at one time they were ready to carry him in triumph, a moment after the hawkers cried about the great treason of count de Mirabeau. When his private conduct was attacked, Mirabeau was silent; "Because," he says, with graceful dignity, "a strict silence is the expiation of faults purely personal, however excusable they may be; and because I waited till time, and my services, should win for me the esteem of the worthy; because, also, the rod of censure has always seemed respectable to me, even in the hands of my enemies; and, above all, because I have never seen any thing but narrow egotism and ridiculous impropriety in occupying one's fellow citizens in affairs not belonging to them." But when his public conduct was attacked, he defended it with an energy and truth that bore down all attack, and raised him higher than ever in the general esteem.

To return to the epoch at which we are arrived. To quell the capital and subdue the deputies, the king and his counsellors summoned troops to surround Paris. Fifteen regiments, composed chiefly of foreigners, advanced. It became evident that the design was formed of using the bayonet, to which Mirabeau had referred, as the only power to which they would submit. He now again came forward to stop the progress of the evil. He proposed an address to the king, demanding that the march of the troops should be countermanded. He still preserved a respectful style towards the monarch, but he did not spare the measures of government, and exposed in open day the direct approach of war and massacre. His speech was covered with applause, and he was commissioned to draw up an address to the king. It was short and forcible: it prophesied, with sagacity, the dangers that must ensue from the presence of the military; it protested with dignity against the force about to be exercised against the assembly, and declared the resolution of the deputies, in spite of snares, difficulties, and terror, to prosecute their task and regenerate the kingdom. "For the first time," says madame de Staël, "France heard that popular eloquence whose natural power is augmented by the importance of events." "It was by Mirabeau," Brougham observes, "that the people were first made to feel the force of the orator, first taught what it was to hear spoken reason and spoken passion; and the silence of ages in those halls was first broken by the thunder of his voice, echoing through the lofty vaults now covering multitudes of excited men."

Dumont, in his "Souvenirs de Mirabeau," asserts that he drew up this address. On several other occasions, he assumes the merit either of writing for Mirabeau or suggesting his speeches. He speaks of him as a great plagiarist, putting all his associates to use in collecting materials for him, and contenting himself with giving them form, or sometimes only voice. This sort of accusation is exceedingly futile. The capacity of gathering materials, lying barren but for the life he puts into them, is the great attribute of genius: it hews an Apollo out of the marble block; places the colours of Raphael on the bare canvass; collects, in one focus, the thoughts of many men inspired by passion and nature: it, as with Mirabeau, takes the spirit of the times, the thoughts and words excited during a crisis; and, by giving to them a voice of command or persuasion, rules the minds of all. In this manner, Mirabeau was a plagiarist, but none but he could use, to govern and subdue, the weapons fabricated, it might be, by other hands. To quote the apt metaphor of Carlisle, he might gather the fuel from others, but the fire was his own. He was not a man formed of shreds and patches taken from other men, nor was Dumont endowed with creative powers to call such a being into life. Mirabeau was a man of God's own making, full of wild passion and remorseful error, but true to the touch of nature; fraught with genius and power; a natural king among those whom he used as his subjects to pay tribute to, and extend the sphere of, his greatness.

1789.
July
11.

The death of the marquis de Mirabeau, at the age of seventy-three, took place at this period. From the time that his son figured in the assembly, he became deeply interested in his career; declaring that his success was "glory, true glory." He was suffering by a chronic pulmonary catarrh, and evidently declining. Mirabeau frequently visited him, and was well received, though they never discussed politics during these short visits. But the marquis caused the speeches of his son to be read to him, as well as the papers that recounted the sittings of the assembly in which he figured. On the 11th of July, while he was listening to his grand-daughter reading, he closed his eyes—his breathing failed—and when she looked up he was dead, with a smile on his face.

Mirabeau, who venerated his father, in spite of the injuries he had sustained from him, was deeply affected by this loss: perhaps pride added to his demonstrations of affliction. He wrote to his constituents, that all the citizens in the world ought to mourn; he scarcely appeared in the assembly, and for a few days gave himself up to sorrow.

It was not a period when a great political character could withdraw himself for more than a few days. The crisis was at hand. July
14. The king had returned a cold answer to the address drawn up by Mirabeau, and presented by the most distinguished deputies; the court still pursued the plan of assembling troops; Necker was dismissed from the ministry; the investment of the capital by the military became imminent,—when the people, animated by mixed fear and indignation, rose: they seized on all the arms they could obtain; the bastille was demolished; for the first time the Parisians felt their power, and tasted of the triumph of shedding the blood of those who resisted them.

The terror of these acts spread to Versailles. The assembly sent deputation after deputation to the king, imploring him to pacify Paris by countermanding the troops. When the destruction of the bastille was known, a fifth deputation was prepared to be presented to the monarch. It was composed of twenty-four members: they were about to leave the chamber on this errand, when Mirabeau stopped them, and with increased vehemence exclaimed,—"Tell the king, that the hordes of foreigners that surround us were yesterday visited by the princes, the princesses, and their favourites, who caressed and exhorted them, and covered them with presents. Tell him that, during the night, these foreign satellites, gorged with gold and wine, predicted, in their impious songs, the servitude of France, and brutally invoked the destruction of the national assembly. Tell him that, in his own palace, his courtiers mingled in the dance to the sound of such music, and that similar to these were the preparations of Saint Bartholomew. Tell him, that Henry IV., whose memory the whole world blesses, he, who ought to be his model among his ancestors, sent provisions to Paris when it revolted, and he was besieging it in person; while, on the contrary, his ferocious advisers keep the corn, brought by trade, from his starving and faithful capital." The deputation was about to carry his words to the king, when the arrival of Louis, without guards or escort, was announced. A murmur of glad welcome ran through the assembly. "Wait," said Mirabeau gravely, "till the king has announced his good intentions. Let a serious respect receive the monarch in this moment of sorrow. The silence of the people is the lesson of kings."

Thus did this wonderful man, by means of the fire and impetuosity of his character, enter at once into the spirit of the hour, while his genius suggested the expressions and the tone that gave it direction and voice.

It is impossible to enter into the detail of all Mirabeau's speeches and acts. A rapid glance at his votes and declarations during this period must suffice. Mirabeau detested despotism, whose iron hand had fallen so heavily on himself. The aid given by the government of his country to his father's tyranny,—the ban placed on him by the nobility who were his equals,—the burning desire for distinction that consumed him,—his contempt for his inferiors in talent,—his faith in the revolution,—such were the passions that gave force to his genius. But his genius showed itself omnipotent nowhere except in the tribune. When he wrote, he but half expressed his thoughts; his passions were but half excited; and Mirabeau's power lay in the union of his passions and his genius. Apart, the former degenerated into vice, and the latter showed itself either exaggerated, sophistical, or inert. In the tribune, their union was complete. When he began to speak he was at first confused,—his breast heaved,—his words were broken,—but the sight of his opponents,—the knowledge of the sympathy he should find in the galleries,—the inspiration of the moment,—suddenly dispersed all mistiness; his eloquence became clear, fervid, sublime,—the truth conjured up images at once striking and appalling. When he was farther excited by the difficulties of a crisis, his courage rose to meet it,—he stept forward with grandeur; a word or a look, which his talent and ugliness at once combined to render imposing, shone out on the assembly,—electrified and commanded it.

This power of seizing on the spirit of the question, clearing the view of the assembly, and leading it onward in the right road, he exerted memorably on the 24th September, when Necker, to remedy the disastrous state of the finances, proposed a patriotic contribution of a fourth of the incomes. A committee, after three days spent in examination, approved the plan. Mirabeau, the known enemy of Necker, spoke, to engage the assembly to adopt it at once, on the recommendation of the minister, without taking any responsibility on itself. The friends of Necker saw the snare, and accused him of injuring the plan of the minister, while he pretended to support it. Mirabeau replied, that he was not the partisan, but, were he the dearest friend of the minister, he should not hesitate to compromise him rather than the assembly. Necker might deceive himself, and the kingdom receive no detriment; but that the public weal were compromised, if the assembly lost its credit. These words had some effect, but still the discussion went on, and still the deputies hesitated to adopt Necker's proposition, till Mirabeau, again ascending the tribune, burst forth with a torrent of overwhelming eloquence in its favour: he painted the horrors of a national bankruptcy, and the consequent guilt of incurring it; he expatiated on the wide-spread misery that must ensue. He continued,—"Two centuries of robbery and depredation have opened a gulf in which the kingdom is nearly swallowed; this gulf must be filled up. Here is a list of French proprietors; select among the richest, so to lessen the number of victims; but still select—for must not a few perish to save the many? Two thousand notables possess enough to fill up the deficit, to bring back order into your finances, and peace and prosperity to the kingdom. Strike! immolate without pity these hapless victims—precipitate them into the abyss;—it will close! Ha! you draw back with horror. Inconsistent pusillanimous men! Do you not see that when you decree bankruptcy, or, what is still more odious, when you render it inevitable without decreeing it, you stain yourselves with a still greater and yet a gratuitous crime? for this sacrifice will at least fill up the deficit. But do you think, because you do not pay, you will no longer be in debt? Do you believe that the thousands, the millions of men, who in one moment will lose by the explosion, or by its reaction, all that made the comfort of their lives, and, perhaps, their only means of support, will allow you to reap the fruits of your crime in peace? Stoical contemplators of the incalculable ills which this catastrophe will bring on France! Insensible egotists! who think that the convulsions of despair and misery will pass away like every other, and the more quickly as they are more violent;—are you sure that so many men, without bread, will tranquilly permit you to taste the viands whose quantity and delicacy you will not suffer to be diminished? No!—you will perish in the universal conflagration that you do not tremble to set a-light, and the loss of your honour will not preserve one of your detestable enjoyments.

* * * * *

Vote, then, for this extraordinary subsidy;—may it suffice! Vote it; because, if you have any doubts with regard to the means (vague and uncertain doubts), you have none on its necessity, and our want of power to replace this proposition by any other—at least for the present. Vote it; for public affairs will not endure procrastination, and we are accountable for all delay. Beware of asking for time. Ruin never gives that. Some days ago, gentlemen, in reference to a ridiculous tumult in the Palais Royal—a laughable insurrection which had no importance except in feeble minds—you heard the violent cry uttered, 'Cataline is at the gates of Rome, and you deliberate!' and then certainly we had near us neither Cataline, nor danger, nor faction, nor Rome. But now bankruptcy, hideous bankruptcy is before us; she menaces to consume you,—your possessions and your honour,—and you deliberate!"

These words raised a tumult of enthusiasm in the assembly. A deputy rose to reply, but the cries overbore him; and, frightened by his task, he remained motionless and mute. "I was near Mirabeau," writes madame de Staël, "when he thus delivered himself. Nothing could be more impressive than his voice; his gestures and words were pregnant with an animation, the power of which was prodigious. The assembly at once received the report of the committee, and adopted the plan of the minister." "This," remarks Thiers, "is the triumph of eloquence; but he alone could obtain it who was animated by the passions and just views of Mirabeau."

Mirabeau hated the assumptions of the aristocracy, but he looked upon royalty as a necessary defence between the lower and the higher orders; at the same time he believed that the welfare of his country demanded that the people should have a voice in the state. Oct.
25. He expressed his opinion on this subject in a letter to his uncle the bailli. He says,—"I have always thought, and now more than ever think, that royalty is the only anchor of safety which can preserve us from shipwreck. And how many efforts I have made, and make each day, to support the executive power, and combat the distrust which induces the national assembly to go beyond the mark! For the rest, we must judge of the revolution by the good and evil of its result, not by the license which prevails at present, which forms a state too violent to be durable. I am reassured with regard to the future, by the consideration, that the revolution, be it injurious or beneficial, is, in fact, consummated. The most enlightened men feel that they must assist the change, to lessen its violence; that resistance is as useless as it must be disastrous; and that every citizen, whether zealous or indifferent, must tend to the same end,—facilitate the consolidation of the empire, and give the machine that movement which will allow us to judge of its excellence or its defects. You recommend me to support the executive power; but you will easily discern that the obstinate resistance of one order of the state, by exciting fresh causes of revenge, and producing new commotions, would destroy that power round which the supreme law of the state commands us now to rally."

It was in this spirit that he spoke for the veto, though fear, perhaps, of compromising his popularity made him abstain from voting. The veto had become a sort of bugbear. When Mirabeau visited Paris, the mob thronged round his carriage, imploring him to prevent the king from having the veto. They were slaves, they said, if the king had the veto;—the national assembly was useless. "Mirabeau," says Dumont, "carried it off very well: he appeased the people; and, using only vague expressions, dismissed the mob with patrician affability."

At the period of the revolution, when the passions of men were excited to bandy calumny with eager voices and pens dipt in gall, Mirabeau was accused of being an Orleanist. It is difficult to say what an Orleanist was. The duke himself, weak but ambitious, never made one step forward but he made two back; so that it became a saying that the duke of Orléans did not belong to the Orleanists. His name, meanwhile, and money were employed to form a party rather inimical to Louis XIV. than favourable to himself. It added to the tumult and tempest of the times, but was of no real influence in the direction of events. Dumont declares that, living intimately with Mirabeau, the most indiscreet and confiding of men, he saw no trace of his complicity in any plot against the court: but that, familiar with the duke as with every one, his manner gave colour to a report which had no other foundation. That he was at this time the enemy of the court is, however, undoubted. When the fatal feast of the gardes du corps, at Versailles, was denounced in the assembly, and the cry of calumny was raised by the royalists, Mirabeau burst out with impetuosity, and declared that he was ready to accuse by name the principal actors in this sacrilegious orgie, on condition that it were first decreed that the person of the king only was inviolable. This expression, pointing at and criminating the queen, silenced the discussion.

During the days of the 5th and 6th October, Mirabeau sought to tranquillise, without any attempt at leading, the multitude. When he first heard of the approach of the rabble rout of poissardes and their followers from the capital, for the purpose of forcing the acceptance of the constitution on the king, Mirabeau addressed the president Mounier, saying, "Paris is marching on us: make an excuse; and go to the castle and tell the king to accept the constitution purely and simply." "Paris marches," replied Mounier; "so much the better: let them kill us all—all, without exception—the nation will be the gainer." When the crowd had invaded Versailles, Mirabeau was not seen. Dumont found him in bed before eleven o'clock in the evening. He rose, and they went together to the national assembly, where he displayed his accustomed dignity by calling on the president to cause the assembly to be respected, and to order the chamber to be cleared of the strangers who filled it. It required all his popularity to succeed. The poissardes in the gallery, with their usual familiarity, cried out, "Mother Mirabeau must speak—we must hear mother Mirabeau!" but he was not a man to make a show on these occasions.

The king humiliated—the court, driven to extremities, yet still struggling, looked round for agents and supporters. The talents and influence of Mirabeau would render his accession to their party invaluable; Necker had named him "Tribun par calcul, et aristocrate par goût;" and this character, joined to his debts, his bad reputation, his known vices, and the very report that he acted for the duke of Orléans, inspired the notion that he was venal. Nov. There can be no doubt that, at this period, a thousand different schemes and hopes agitated this strange and powerful man. He detested the aristocracy and despotism; but he was attached to royalty and the image of the English constitution; and various advances made him by the court led him to believe that a conscientious support of royalty might be combined with his personal interests. Dumont mentions a conversation he had with him, in which he showed him a plan for the retreat of the king to Metz—the necessity the assembly would find itself under of following him there, and the consequent quelling of the anarchical power in France. Dumont, foreseeing that civil war and massacre would follow such attempts, argued strongly against it. Mirabeau replied that the court was resolved, and that he thought it right to combine to ensure its success, and cause them to act so as to preserve the liberty of the country. His purpose was, however, shaken by the arguments of Dumont, and the whole plan was subsequently given up. Thiers gives a somewhat different account. He narrates that in an interview with a friend, in the park of Versailles, that lasted the whole night, Mirabeau declared that he was resolved for the sake of his glory, for the good of his country, and the advancement of his own fortune, to remain immovable between the throne and the disorganisers, and to consolidate the monarchy while he participated in its power. His pride, however, stood in the way of any debasing steps. When the court made him offers, it was informed that he would make no sacrifice of principles; but that, if the king would be faithful to the constitution, he was ready to become his staunch supporter. His conditions were, that his debts should be paid, and that he should have a place in the ministry. According to law, the ministers could neither speak nor vote in the assembly—before accepting place, Mirabeau endeavoured to get this law repealed. He failed; and during the discussion Lanjuinais proposed that the actual deputies should be forbidden to accept place. Mirabeau angrily replied, that so baneful a decree ought not to be passed for the sake of one man; but that he would vote for it with the amendment, that a place in the ministry should not be forbidden all the deputies, but only to M. de Mirabeau, deputy for Aix. This outburst of frank audacity had no effect; Lanjuinais' motion passed; and Mirabeau felt exceedingly indignant towards the assembly, and often spoke of the members with bitter contempt; yet his letters bear the impress of generous forbearance, inspired by enlarged views of the duties of a citizen. "I do not say," he writes, "that the assembly is not somewhat severe towards me; with all that, nothing can prevent, when the occasion presents, this struggling, tumultuous, and, above all, ostracising assembly, from returning under my influence: that results from the firmness of my principles, and the support given by my talent. It was from the bottom of my heart that I once wrote, 'Malheur aux peuples reconnaissants!' One is never quit towards one's country. One gains glory, at least, by serving it in whatever state. No element of public servitude ought to exist—and gratitude is a very active one."

There is generosity, but not absolute wisdom in this dictum. In republics, more evil arises from want of accord and stability of purpose than from leaning on one man, especially among the French, who, vain by nature, are more apt each to believe in his own capacity than rely on that of another. Unfortunately, this distrust of public servants took firm root during the revolution. First, no deputy was allowed to be minister, so that no man of business could be deputy. Afterwards, the members of one assembly were not allowed to be elected in the succeeding one, so that inexperience, crude views, and want of mutual reliance, became the characteristic of the French legislators.

1790.
Ætat.
41.

Mirabeau's negotiations with the court meanwhile went on; he even received for a short time a pension from Monsieur, the king's eldest brother; the queen treated him with winning condescension—and she was won also by the charm of his superiority and frankness. Thus he did not sell his principles, which remained unchanged, yet he made a mart of them; and, in the eye of history, falls from the high position of a man above the reach of gold. His want of docility, meanwhile, often displeased the court—he refused to compromise his popularity at its beck, and despised the men who wished at once to make use of him and yet to render him useless.

His position, though it seem dubious, was plain enough. He wished to lead a moderately royal party, and give stability to the monarchy. He desired to oppose the jacobins and disorganisers; but his views did not meet the sanguine and senseless hopes and wishes of the court—which aimed at nothing less than a return to the ancien régime. He stood therefore companionless—seizing at times on and thundering from the tribune—making his power felt whenever he was roused, but walking in darkness, uncertain of the means which yet he grappled at, whereby to confirm his greatness.

In the assembly he continued to extend his influence by means of his enthusiasm, and his power of expressing it. Various methods had been made use of to get rid of the constituent assembly, and elect another—under the pretence that, the work of forming a constitution being accomplished, their task was at an end, and that the continuation of their power was illegal and a usurpation over the throne. In the midst of the cries which these words called forth, Mirabeau rose. "We are asked," he said "when the deputies of the people, became a national convention? I reply, on that day when, finding the entrance to their chamber surrounded by soldiers, they hastened to assemble in the first place they could find, and swore to perish rather than to betray or abandon the rights of the nation. Our powers on that day changed their nature. Whatever these powers may be which we have exerted, our efforts and our labours have legitimated them, and the adhesion of the whole nation has sanctified them. Do you remember the heroic words of the great man of antiquity, who had neglected the legal forms in saving his country? Summoned by a factious tribune to swear whether he had observed the laws, he replied, f I swear that I have saved my country!' Gentlemen, I swear that you have saved France!" At this grand oath, the whole assembly, carried away by a sudden impulse, closed the discussion and dismissed the question.

The same power gave him the victory, when he was accused of conspiring with the duke of Orléans to produce the commotions of the 5th and 6th of October, and caused the accusation to be cast aside as devoid of credit.[14]

1791.
Ætat.
42.

We have an interesting picture of his position at the commencement of the year 1791 from Dumont—who though his friend, and at times his secretary, or rather, as he affirms, the composer of some of his most successful speeches, gives no signs of partiality. "I dined several times at the house of Mirabeau, who told me that he was on terms with the court, and directed its counsels; and that his hopes were well founded—as the royal personages had begun to see the necessity of attaching him to their cause, and of no longer listening to the advice of the emigrants and princes. He now lived in good style, and his house was handsomely fitted up: he was better off than he had ever been, and showed no discretion in the use of his money. I was surprised to see him show off, after dinner, a case in which were several jewels. This was proclaiming his being on the civil list, and I wondered that his popularity did not suffer by it. His table was splendid, and his company numerous. His house was filled early in the morning, and it was a perpetual levée from seven o'clock till the hour of his repairing to the assembly; and a great crowd frequently assembled at that time to enjoy the felicity of seeing him pass. Although titles were abolished, he was still the comte de Mirabeau, not only with his servants and visiters, but also the people, who love to decorate their idols. I could have learnt from him the secret of his intercourse with the court, his views, means, and intrigues, for he was well disposed to open himself to me; but I neither wished to be censor nor flatterer. He insinuated twenty times that his only object was to save the monarchy, if it were possible. That means were necessary to accomplish this end; that trivial morality was hostile to that on a large scale; that disinterested services were rare; and that hitherto the court had wasted its money on traitors.[15]

"During the last week of my stay in Paris, I saw him in a new situation, which he had often pretended to despise, but more from mortification than indifference. He was president of the assembly,—never was the place so well filled. He displayed new talents. He put an order and clearness into the work, of which no idea had hitherto been formed. By a word, he threw light on a question; by a word, he appeased a tumult. His deference to all parties, the respect he always testified for the assembly, the conciseness of his speeches, his answers to the various deputations that came to the bar,—which, whether spontaneous or prepared, were always delivered with dignity and grace, and gave satisfaction even in refusals,—in a word, his activity, impartiality, and presence of mind added to his reputation and success in a place which had been a stumbling block to his predecessors. He had the art of putting himself foremost, and drawing the general attention on himself, even when, not being allowed to speak from the tribune, he appeared to have fallen from his best prerogative. Several of his enemies and rivals, who had chosen him for the sake of putting him in eclipse, had the chagrin of finding that they had added to his glory.

"He was far from being in good health, and told me that he felt himself perishing away. I observed that his style of life would long ago have killed a man less robust than himself. He had no repose from seven in the morning till ten or eleven at night. He was in continual conversation and agitation both of thought and feeling. When we parted, he embraced me with an emotion he had never before displayed.—'I shall die at the oar,' he said, 'and we probably shall never meet again. When I am gone my worth will be acknowledged. The evils that I have arrested will burst over France, and the criminal faction that trembles before me will no longer be bridled. I have only prophecies of evil before my eyes. Ah! my friend, how right we were when we desired at the beginning to prevent the commons from declaring themselves a national assembly,—that was the origin of our evils. Since they were victorious, they have not ceased to show themselves unworthy; they have desired to govern the king, instead of governing through him. Now neither they nor he will have authority; a vile faction will domineer over them, and fill France with terror."

He lived for three months after saying these words, and lived still to triumph, and to add to his glory. The last scene of moment in which he displayed his mighty influence was during the discussion of the law against emigration. Mirabeau opposed it as tyrannical and unjust: the popular voice went the other way, and cries were uttered against him. His thunder silenced their more feeble demonstrations. "The popularity," he exclaimed, "which I desired is but a feeble reed; but I will force it into the earth, and it shall take root in the soil of reason and justice!" Applause followed this burst. "I swear," he continued, "if a law of emigration passes, I swear to disobey you." He descended from the tribune, having silenced his enemies, and astonished the assembly. The discussion went on, and the adjournment was moved, to give time to prepare a law different from the one under discussion, and so to calm the people. The tumult continued, and cries of applause or disapprobation drowned every other sound, till Mirabeau demanded attention. A deputy, M. Goupil, who some time ago had attacked Mirabeau with the cry that Cataline was at their doors, now exclaimed,—"By what right does M. de Mirabeau exercise a dictatorship?" At these words the orator threw himself into the tribune. The president remarked,—"I have not accorded the right to speak; let the assembly decide." The assembly listened.—"I beg my interruptors," said Mirabeau, "to remember that through life I have combated against tyranny, and I will combat it wherever it is to be found." Speaking thus, he turned his eyes from right to left, while applause followed his words;—he continued:—"I beg M. Goupil to remember that not long ago he was mistaken as to the Cataline whose dictatorship he now resists. I beg the assembly to remark that the question of adjournment, simple in appearance, comprehends others, since it supposes that there is a law to form." Murmurs rose from the left; the orator fixed his eyes on the inimical party, and its leaders, Barnave and Lameth. "Silence those thirty voices," he cried: "I am content also to vote for the adjournment, but on condition that no sedition follows."

This was the greatest, and it was the last struggle that Mirabeau had with the jacobins,—his last attempt to stop the progress of that revolution to which he had given form and dignity during its primal struggles. "I would not," he wrote, in a letter meant for the eye of the king,—"I would not have laboured only at a vast destruction." Thus pledged by his principles and his promises to the court to prop the monarchy, his task was becoming one that demanded more force than, even giant as he was, he possessed. The shades of death cover the probabilities of the future; but it can scarcely be doubted that he must have modified his views, animated the king to a more resolute and popular course, or been swept away in the torrent of blood so soon about to flow.

For some time, incessant labour and excitement undermined his life. The ophthalmias, which had first attacked him in his prison, in Vincennes, were renewed, and he Was often obliged to apply leeches to his eyes during the intervals of one day's sitting of the assembly. The sense of disease at work within seemed to him to resemble the effects of poison; and the medicines he took added to, instead of diminishing, his conviction that he was perishing. His last and fatal seizure was accompanied by intense pain and agonising spasms; and the only physician he admitted, who was his friend, began to lose hope. As soon as his illness became publicly known, his house was surrounded by an anxious and mute multitude. In the hour of danger they remembered him as their leader, their preserver, their hope. The bulletins of his progress were seized on with avidity. Louis XVI. sent ostensibly twice a day, and much oftener in secret, to hear how he went on. For a moment, the king and the people appeared united by a common interest, and had a desire of currying favour with the revolutionary party animated the monarch, and induced him to visit the dying man, he had acquired a popularity never to be forgotten. The demagogues feared that he might have been led to such an act; but it was out of character with Louis, who clung longer to the etiquettes than to the reality of royalty.

The last days of Mirabeau were divided between agonising pain and calm and affectionate conversation with his friends. While he hoped to recover, he gave up all his thoughts to his cure; and even refused to receive his friends, that the remedies might have a fairer chance. But, when he felt the sure approach of death, he was eager to have them around, and talking with them, holding their hands, and looking affectionately on them, found deep enjoyment in the consciousness of their sympathy and love. Already he spoke of himself as dead—with great reluctance he allowed another medical man to be called in, whose remedies proving ineffectual, Mirabeau said, "You are a great physician, but there is one greater than you; he who created the wind that destroys all—the water that penetrates and produces all—the fire that vivifies or decomposes all." He heard with emotion of the demonstrations of affection made by the people. His last hours were marked by mingled philosophy and gaiety: he called his friends about him, and discoursed of himself and public affairs, with a view to futurity after he was gone; he made his will—the legacies of which the count de Lamark, who had been his means of communication with the court, promised should be paid. The visit of his enemy, Barnave, who came in the name of the jacobins to inquire concerning him, afforded him pleasure. He gave M. de Talleyrand a discourse he had prepared for the tribune; and, speaking of Pitt, he said "he is a minister of preparations, and governs by threats: I should have given him some trouble had I lived." He felt the approach of his last hour. "I shall die to-day, my friend," he said, to Cabanis; "no more remains than to crown one's self with flowers, and surround one's self with music, so to pass peacefully into eternal sleep." Hearing the report of cannon, fired for some ceremony, he exclaimed, "Hark! the funeral rites of Achilles are begun!" As he lost his speech, he yet smiled softly and serenely on his friends. The spasms returned with renewed violence. Unable to speak, he wrote, asking, that opium might be given him to appease them; but, before he could take it, he was no more. His death took place on the 20th of April, 1791, at the age of forty-two. The news quickly spread through the court, the town, the assembly. Every party had placed their hopes in him, and he was mourned by all except such as might envy his fame. On hearing the fatal intelligence, the assembly interrupted its sitting; a general mourning was ordered, and a public funeral.

He was buried in the Pantheon (formerly church of Sainte Geneviève), which had been dedicated "Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnoissante;" and Mirabeau was the first buried there. His funeral took place on the morrow of his death. The ministers and magistrates, the assembly, the army, the municipalities, in short, the members of every public institution, accompanied the procession. He was more numerously and honourably attended, and he was more sincerely mourned, than kings and princes had been, or than any other great man of his own times. During the reign of terror his remains were torn from the tomb, and scattered to the winds, as those of a traitor to the nation.

The peculiarity of Mirabeau, as we before remarked, was the union of great genius with impetuous passions. The last, manifesting themselves in boyhood, in a family which, while the members were remarkable for vehemence in themselves, exacted the most entire filial obedience from their offspring, caused him to be opposed, persecuted, and oppressed. Seventeen lettres de cachet had been issued against him, while he felt that his crimes were rather errors in which the public or the state had no concern. Shut up in a narrow fortress or narrower cell, his hatred of tyranny was strongly excited, and he sought in his writings to express it; and, when the occasion offered, he combated it with impetuous eloquence and determined resistance. At that time, aware how much his influence was lessened by the errors of his youth, he had been known, when he felt his progress checked by the disrepute in which his private character was held, to weep, and to exclaim, "I cruelly expiate the errors of my youth!"

With all his errors he was a warm and kind-hearted man, and gifted with undaunted courage. During his political career, his enemies were perpetually endeavouring to embroil him in duels, which he avoided without the most distant suspicion of cowardice being attached to him. He was a man of wit, and many of his sayings are recorded. They are often bitter epigrams on his enemies, and inspired by hatred rather than truth. He called the virtuous La Fayette Grandison-Cromwell; and said of him that he had bien sauté pour reculer, as his latter conduct did not come up to his first entrance on life when he went to America. He was the implacable enemy of Necker, who, he says, was "a clock always too slow." While speaking in the national assembly, he pointed to a picture, emblemising Time, with his scythe and his hour-glass always full, exclaiming, "We have taken his scythe, but we have forgotten his time-piece." Of the national assembly he said, "It has Hannibals in plenty, and needs a Fabius." It was the fashion to call Clermont-Tonnerre the Pitt of France: "As you please," said Mirabeau; "but how would Pitt like to be called the Clermont-Tonnerre of England?" His faculty of wit rose sometimes into grandeur. When he spoke of the convulsions that would ensue on the entire overthrow of the monarchy, he cried, "You will have assassinations and massacres; but you will never rise to the execrable height of a civil war." Talleyrand said that he dramatised his death. It is a strange moment for vanity to become paramount; and the chief trait of his death-bed was his gentleness and serenity, and the affection he showed to his friends. Politics occupied him at times; and he said to those about him, "Après ma mort, les factieux se partageront les lambeaux de la monarchie."

The great quality of his mind was the power of seizing on any word or idea presented to him, and reproducing it at the right moment, with such vigour and fire as made it omnipotent. It was the eagle eye that enabled him on the instant to discern the right path, or the commanding idea, and to express it with force and majesty. With a lion heart, untiring perseverance, and the strength of a giant, he swept away opposition, inspired confidence, and fixed his standard far within the ranks of the enemy, where none dared touch it.

So well could he adapt his very ugliness, his flashing eyes, abundant hair, and marks of physical power, to the sentiments which he expressed, that an actor on hearing him speak in the tribune exclaimed, "Ah! what a pity he was born a gentleman; he has missed his vocation!" He was greater as an orator than a leader. But each day he lived he advanced in the science of party strife. At the last, when he contemplated an organised opposition to the jacobins, he became expert; but it may be believed that he would have found an insuperable obstacle to success in the passions of the people.

In early life his misfortunes arose from not having embarked in a fitting career. As a military man, a century before, as a marshal under Louis XIV., he had replaced Turenne; a few years later, he might have emulated Napoleon. As it was, had he been allowed to seek active service in the army, his turbulence had found vent in the midst of hardship and danger—a general would have been given to his country. Another school was needed to form the leader of the revolution: the exasperation engendered by tyranny, the resolution born in the solitude of a dungeon, the ambition nurtured by contempt of inferior men—all that had quelled a feebler man—gave force and direction to his passions, perception and enthusiasm to his genius, and made that Mirabeau, whom his countrymen regard as one of the greatest of their leaders, and whose name is a light that burns inextinguishably amidst the glory that illustrated the commencement of the French revolution.

[10]These extracts form the best part of the "Memoirs of Mirabeau," by M. Lucas Montigny, his adopted, or, rather, his natural son,—a work of zeal and labour, but undigested, diffuse, and ill-judged. Had the author published a selection from these letters, which were placed in his hands by the family, we should have an invaluable work. As it is, we are often as much tantalised by what is omitted, as edified by what is given, of the correspondence. When the extracts from it cease, the pages of the memoirs lose all their charm and value: they degenerate into little else than extracts from newspapers, and vapid discussions by the author.

[11]The subsequent history of this hapless victim of a depraved state of society which set the seal of guilt on her attachment, may be briefly stated. After the birth of her child, Sophie was taken from the asylum in which she was first placed, and confined in the convent of Saintes-Claires, at Gien. By degrees many indulgences were allowed her, and she received visits. Mirabeau became jealous, and angrily expressed his jealousy, both in letters, and in a single interview which they had after his liberation from Vincennes. Had Mirabeau come to this interview with a candid mind and a constant heart, he had at once have acknowledged Sophie's innocence. But his attachment had waned, and he was intent on completing his reconciliation with his father, and contriving one with his wife. He played the part of the wolf with the lamb in the fable; and, to the utter destruction of the nobler portion of his nature, the ties of love and affection, the knitting of which had occasioned misery and ruin to both, were broken for ever. Soon after, the death of her husband restored Sophie to her liberty, but she chose to continue to reside within the precincts of the convent, though she used her liberty to make visits and excursions. She was greatly loved by all who knew her. Her sweetness and gentleness attached many friends: her charity and kind sympathy caused her to be beloved by the poor, by whom her memory was long gratefully preserved. She formed a second attachment for a gentleman to whom she was about to be married, but his death prevented their union. Sophie resolved not to survive him. Immediately on receiving his last sigh, she prepared to die. She shut herself up with two braziers of burning charcoal; and was found on the morrow dead. She died on the 8th September, 1789, in the 37th year of her age.

[12]The subsequent life of Madame de Mirabeau was singular. For some years she continued under her father's guidance, and, at his wish, to live a life of pleasure; theatricals and every sort of dissipation being the order of the day. A reconciliation was set on foot, and had nearly been accomplished between her and her husband at the period of his death. She emigrated with her father during the revolution, and suffered a good deal of poverty. She subsequently married a count de Rocca, and visited Paris, to endeavour to recover some portion of her property. Her husband died soon after, and she resumed the name of Mirabeau, of which she became proud, reviving the recollections of past times, surrounding herself with every object that could remind her of the husband of her youth. She lived in intimacy with his sister, madame du Saillant, and extended her kindness to the young man whom Mirabeau had adopted. Though frivolous, she had never been ill conducted, and her faults, being those of timidity, are chiefly to be attributed to her father, who, loving ease and pleasure, and glad to have his daughter with him, prevented her by every means in his power from fulfilling her duties towards her husband. She passed her last years in the hotel de Mirabeau, and died in the year 1800, in the same room where her husband had expired.

[13]There is a fragment preserved of Mirabeau, remarkable for its know, ledge of human motives, which shows the stress he laid on a resolute line of conduct. It deserves to be quoted:—

"If I wrote a book on the military art, the chapter on enthusiasm should not be the shortest. If I wrote a treatise on politics, I would treat largely of the art of daring, which is not less necessary for the success of civil enterprises than of military operations; and also to try the strength of the man who leads; for it is the further or nearer boundary-line of the possible that marks the difference of men.

"In reading history, I find that almost all the faults committed by the chiefs, of whatever party, arise from indecision in their principles, and obliquity of conduct. They revolt by halves; they are faithful by halves: they dare not entirely cast aside duty, nor entirely sacrifice their passions. The first steps, which ought to be full of confidence, are vacillating and ill-assumed: they arrange a retreat, and take several roads to reach the goal. Artifices, that favourite resource of ordinary politicians, are the effect of this timidity of the understanding or the heart. They negotiate to disguise themselves, to attract partisans, while they ought to walk straight to the object in view by the shortest line. What is the invariable result? He who wishes to deceive is deceived; they have failed in seizing the decisive moment, and have persuaded no one. As much as extremes are unwise in the course of daily life, so much are half measures insufficient in critical events; and the most dangerous, as well as the most inconsistent conduct, is to get half rid of prejudices. But there are nearly as few resolute bad men as decided honest ones; and most men want character."

[14]The compiler of the memoirs and correspondence of La Fayette makes no doubt that Mirabeau belonged to the Orleanist faction till after the 6th of October, when he began to treat with the court. This was evidently La Fayette's own conviction, apparently founded on the evidence laid before the assembly, August 7th, 1790, which Mirabeau refuted, as mentioned in the text.

[15]Copy of a treaty with M. de Mirabeau.—"First, The king gives M. de Mirabeau the promise of an embassy: this promise shall be announced by Monsieur himself to M. de Mirabeau. Second, The king will immediately, until that promise be fulfilled, grant a private appointment to M. de Mirabeau of 50,000 livres a month, which appointment will continue at least for the space of four months. M. de Mirabeau pledges himself to aid the king with his knowledge, influence, and eloquence, in all that he may judge useful to the welfare of the state and the interest of the king—two things that all good citizens undoubtedly look upon as inseparable; and, in case M. de Mirabeau should not be convinced of the solidity of the reasons that may be given him, he will abstain from speaking on the subject.

(Approved) LOUIS.

(Signed) LE COMTE DE MIRABEAU."

"Note.—The original of this article is in the handwriting of Monsieur, at present Louis XVIII."

This paper is published in vol. II. appendix, no. V. of the memoirs of Lafayette. It was found in the iron closet, discovered in the Tuileries on the 10th of August, 1792, containing secret papers. In the same receptacle is an autograph letter from Louis XVI. to La Fayette, begging him to concert with Mirabeau respecting the subjects most important to the welfare of the state and the king's service and person. This letter La Fayette suspects to have been dictated by Mirabeau himself, and was never received by him. It is dated June 29th, 1790. The treaty first quoted is printed without a date. This alliance of the court with Mirabeau was first brought about by Monsieur, the king's eldest brother. Afterwards, it would seem that some other was entered into, negotiated by the count de la Mark, afterwards prince d'Aremberg, which was mentioned to Bouille, Feb. 6th, 1791. The prince d'Aremberg lived in Brussels till 1833, and said to La Fayette, that Mirabeau only made himself be paid to be of his own opinion; yet the stipulation of silence, when not convinced by the court, in the above treaty, looks like a still more entire sale of his influence.