“ He must then go towards the interior of France to a provincial capital, best of all to Rouen, and there he must appeal to the people and summon a great convention. It would be ruin to appeal to the noblesse, as the queen advised: “un corps de noblesse n’est point une armée, qui puisse combattre.” When this great convention met the king must show himself ready to recognize that great changes have taken place, that feudalism and absolutism have for ever disappeared, and that a new relation between king and people has arisen, which must be loyally observed on both sides for the future. ”

“ The love affairs of Mirabeau form a well-known history, owing to the celebrity of the letters to Sophie. Yet it may be asserted that until the more durable and more reputable connexion with Mme de Nehra these love episodes were the most disgraceful blemishes in a life otherwise of a far higher moral character than has been commonly supposed. As to the marquess, his use of lettres de cachet is perfectly defensible on the theory of lettres de cachet, and Mirabeau, if any son, surely deserved such correction. ”

“ During the Revolution he received yet more help; men were proud to labour for him, and did not murmur because he absorbed all the credit and fame. Etienne Dumont, Clavière, Antoine Adrien Lamourette and Etienne Salomon Reybaz were but a few of the most distinguished of his collaborators. Dumont was a Genevese exile, and an old friend of Romilly’s, who willingly prepared for him those famous addresses which Mirabeau used to make the Assembly pass by sudden bursts of eloquent declamation ”

“ On the great subject of peace and war he supported the king’s authority, and with some success. Again Mirabeau almost alone of the Assembly held that the soldier ceased to be a citizen when he became a soldier; he must submit to be deprived of his liberty to think and act, and must recognize that a soldier’s first duty is obedience. ”

“ His failure to control the theorizers showed Mirabeau, after the removal of the king and the Assembly to Paris, that his eloquence would not enable him to guide the Assembly by himself, and that he must therefore try to get some support. He wished to establish a strong ministry, which should be responsible like an English ministry, but to an assembly chosen to represent the people of France better than the English House of Commons at that time represented England. ”

“ Mirabeau first set to work to get the sentence of death still hanging over him reversed, and by his eloquence not only succeeded in this but got M. de Monnier condemned in the costs of the whole law proceedings. From Pontarlier he went to Aix, where he claimed the court’s order that his wife should return to him. She naturally objected, but his eloquence would have won his case, even against Jean Etienne Marie Portalis, the leader of the Aix Bar, had he not in his excitement accused his wife of infidelity, on which the court pronounced a decree of separation. ”

“ It shows, though in rather a diffuse and declamatory form, that application of wide historical knowledge, keen philosophical perception, and genuine eloquence to a practical purpose which was the great characteristic of Mirabeau, both as a political thinker and as a statesman.
With his release from Vincennes (August 1782) begins the second period of Mirabeau’s life. He found that his Sophie was an idealized version of a rather common and ill-educated woman, and she consoled herself with the affection of a young officer, after whose death she committed suicide. ”

“ This, indeed, is not surprising, when one considers that, from the first moment of his entering upon the career of an author, he had been altogether indifferent how numerous or how powerful might be the enemies he should provoke. ”

“ He first thought of becoming a minister at a very early date, if we may believe a story contained in the Mémoires of the duchesse d’Abrantes, to the effect that in May 1789 the queen tried to bribe him, but that he refused this and expressed his wish to be a minister. ”