"Ils m'ont dit, 'Choisis d'être oppresseur ou victime:'J'embrassai le malheur, et leur laissai le crime."
"Ils m'ont dit, 'Choisis d'être oppresseur ou victime:'J'embrassai le malheur, et leur laissai le crime."
A couplet peculiarly applicable to him who would have been gladly received by the violent party, and had the way open to him to rule, instead of being sacrificed as a victim. He declares in this poem that the anticipation of a violent death did not alter the serenity of his soul, and speaks of the occupations that banished ennui from his solitary place of refuge.
He was soon to lose this shelter: a newspaper fell into his hands in which he read the decree that outlawed him, and denounced the pain of death against any one who should harbour one of the proscribed. He instantly resolved no longer to endanger his generous hostess,—she endeavoured to dissuade him from this fatal step, but in vain: he disguised himself as a countryman, and passed the barriers without a passport. He directed his steps to Sceaux, where he hoped to find refuge in the house of a friend; but he was absent in Paris, nor expected back for three days, and Condorcet was obliged to hide in the neighbouring quarries. After several days spent miserably in this spot, hunger forced him to enter the little inn of Chamont. The avidity with, which he ate the food placed before him, and his squalid appearance, drew the attention of a member of the committee of public safety of Sceaux, who happened to be present. He was asked for his passport, and, not having one, was arrested and interrogated. No ready he hung on the lips of the worshipper of truth, and his unsatisfactory answers, and a Horace found in his pocket with marginal notes in pencil, contributed to reveal hisname. He was taken to Bourg-la-Reine. Such was his state of exhaustion that he fainted at Châtillon, and it was found necessary to mount him on a vine-dresser's horse. On his arrival at Bourg, he was thrown into a dungeon, and forgotten by the jailor for the space of twenty-four hours, when he was found dead; some suppose from the effects of poison; but the probabilities are that he died of exhaustion, hunger, and cold.
The accusation against Condorcet, found in madame Roland's memoirs, where she speaks of his cowardice, cannot be passed over, though we do not give it absolute credence. Her asperity is not measured, though she speaks highly of his intellect. "It may be said," she remarks, "of his understanding and his person that it is a fine essence absorbed in cotton. The timidity that forms the basis of his character, and which he displays even in society, in his countenance and attitudes, does not result from his frame alone, but seems inherent in his soul, and his talents have furnished him with no means of subduing it." There must be both misapprehension and exaggeration in this picture. We find no pusillanimity in his last acts or writings. When he might have saved himself among the Mountain party, he chose to share the fate of the proscribed Girondists. This conduct could spring only from conscientious and noble motives, and a courageous spirit. His numerous political labours give no sign of lukewarmness or tergiversation. They are clear, fervent, and bold with regard to those principles which he held dear. If not profound, nor endowed with the highest order of genius, yet his erudition, ready talent for argument, and admirable memory, give him a high place among men of talent. As a politician, his unflinching war against royalty and aristocracy place him among those politicians who look on mankind as a species, and legislate for them as an equal whole, instead of dividing them into ranks and tribes. His benevolence made him the enemy of oppression, and he expressed this when he exclaimed, "Peacewith cottages, war on castles!" which, had it comprised the history of revolution, the history of France were not stained with its darkest pages. Thesans-culottesdid not spare cottages: they made war on all who were not as ferocious as themselves: Condorcet was among the victims. Benevolence, justice, and attachment to the cause of freedom, remained warm in his heart to the end. Not long before his death, anticipating the speedy close of his existence, he put on paper his last wishes with regard to his daughter. He desired that she should be educated in republican simplicity, and taught to crush every feeling of vengeance towards his destroyers. "Let her know," he wrote, "that none ever entered my heart."
His wife was a woman of great beauty, merit, and talent, and was the author of some philosophical works. She was thrown into prison by Robespierre, but escaped the guillotine, and did not die till 1822, having lived many years in Paris, surrounded by the remnants of the French republicans and philosophers of 1793. His daughter was distinguished for her unpretending virtues and accomplished mind. She became the wife of the celebrated Arthur O'Connor.
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, asmany 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, hedisdained 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 ofhis 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 letterswhich 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 acareful 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 byanother 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 ofthis 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 milderthoughts 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 asto 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 thetenants 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 theéclatthat 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 otherextreme, 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 wifebefore 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 slightestcause 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—thefather 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. deMonnier, 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?"
"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 neighbourhoodwhich 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 ofsoftening 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 lovemay 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 tohis 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, collateralheirs 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 hisfaults. 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 monthsof 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, whenhe 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 affairsagainst 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 asinveterate 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 hisdifficulties; 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 inpolitics 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 violentlyopposed, 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 ofassembling 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 themelée, I shall be able to say, 'Listen to a man who has never varied in his principles, nor deserted the public cause.'"