MIRABEAU. By THOMAS CARLYLE.

[Count Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, born 1749, died 1791; distinguished as statesman and orator in the days preceding the French Revolution. The heir of a noble name, his early life was one of wild excess and eccentric adventure, but already marked by the intellectual daring and brilliancy which afterward made his name famous. In 1789 he was elected to the States-General from Aix as representative, however, of the Third Estate (the Commons), not of the nobility to which he belonged. Already strongly infected by liberal theories, his energy, intellectual power and eloquence soon made him the foremost figure in the great legislative body. At first antagonistic to royal pretension, he finally recognized the dangers of the coming revolution at an early stage, and attempted to stem the current. His efforts to reconcile clashing interests from 1789 to 1791 were characterized by the most splendid powers of the orator and statesman. His premature death removed the only barrier to the rising revolutionary tide. He was the idol of the populace, and it is believed by many historians that, had he lived, the French Revolution would have flowed in a different channel.]

Which of these six hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have; be their work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be? With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar’s-head, fit to be “shaken” as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewed, seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy—and burning fire of genius; like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honoré Riquetti Mirabeau, the world-compeller; man-ruling deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Staël, he steps proudly along, though looked at askance here; and shakes his black chevelure, or lion’s-mane, as if prophetic of great deeds.

Yes, reader, that is the type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man—and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say with the old despot: “The National Assembly? I am that.”

Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood; for the Riquettis, or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred; irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes verged toward madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow, chains two mountains together; and the chain, with its “iron star of five rays,” is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it drifting—which also shall be seen?

Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his grandfather, stout Col-d’Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day, lie sunk together on the bridge at Casano; while Prince Eugene’s cavalry galloped and regalloped over him—only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head; and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, “Mirabeau is dead, then!” Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breath, and miraculous surgery—for Gabriel was yet to be. With his silver-stock he kept his scarred head erect, through long years; and wedded; and produced tough Marquis Victor, the Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this long-expected rough-hewed Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the light; roughest lion’s whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion (for our old marquis too was lion-like, most unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in vain, oh Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dogcart of political economy, and be a Friend of Men; he will not be thou, but must and will be himself, another than thou. Divorce lawsuits, “whole family save one in prison, and three-score Lettres-de-Cachet” for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.

Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Rhé and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the fortress of Joux, and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the dungeon of Vincennes—all by Lettre-de-Cachet from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix parliaments (to get back his wife); the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear; “the clatter-teeth (claque-dents)!” snarls singular old Mirabeau, discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.

But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime-ministers, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men he has gained; for, at bottom, it is a social, loving heart, that wild, unconquerable one—more especially all manner of women. From the archer’s daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could not but “steal,” and be beheaded for—in effigy! For, indeed, hardly since the Arabian prophet lay dead to Ali’s admiration was there seen such a love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In war, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In literature, he has written on “Despotism,” on “Lettres-de-Cachet”; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities; books on the “Prussian Monarchy,” on “Cagliostro,” on “Calonne,” on “The Water-Companies of Paris”—each book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarm-fire; huge, smoky, sudden! The fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is mine!

Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man himself he can make his. “All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)!” snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of qualities for him. In that forty years’ “struggle against despotism” he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union; this man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him; a born king of men!

But consider further how, as the old marquis still snarls, he has “made away with (humé, swallowed, snuffed-up) all formulas”—a fact, which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object, and see through it and conquer it; for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles, but with an eye! Unhappily without decalogue, moral code, or theorem of any fixed sort, yet not without a strong living soul in him, and sincerity there; a reality, not an artificiality, not a sham! And so he, having struggled “forty years against despotism,” and “made away with all formulas,” shall now become the spokesman of a nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism; to make away with her old formulas—having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with such formulas—and even go bare, if need be, till she have found new ones.

Toward such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke. And now it has got air; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere, too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory over that—and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months pours out in flame and molten fire-torrents all that is in him, the Pharos and wonder-sign of an amazed Europe—and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest of them all; in the whole national deputies, in the whole nation, there is none like and none second to thee.