Note 142 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Mirabeau bore much of his character imprinted on his person and features. He was short, bull-necked, and very strongly made. A quantity of thick matted hair hung round features of a coarse and exaggerated character, strongly scarred and seamed. "Figure to your mind," he said, describing his own countenance to a lady who knew him not, "a tiger who has had the small-pox." When he talked of confronting his opponents in the Assembly, his favourite phrase was, "I will show them La Hure," that is, the boar's head, meaning his own tusked and shaggy countenance.—S.