the neck that he had ever after to wear a silver stock; yet he
never rose above the rank of colonel, owing to an eccentric habit
of speaking unpleasant truths to his superiors. On retiring from
the service he married Françoise de Castellane, and left at his
death, in 1737, three sons–Victor marquis de Mirabeau, Jean
Antoine, bailli de Mirabeau, and Comte Louis Alexandre de
Mirabeau. The great Mirabeau was the eldest surviving son of
the marquess. When but three years old he had a virulent attack
of small-pox which left his face disfigured, and contributed to
his father's dislike of him. Being destined for the army, he was
entered at a pension militaire at Paris. Of this school, which had
Lagrange for its professor of mathematics, we have an amusing
account in the life of Gilbert Elliot, 1st earl of Minto, who with
his brother Hugh, afterwards British minister at Berlin, there
made the acquaintance of Mirabeau. On leaving this school in
1767 he received a commission in a cavalry regiment which his
grandfather had commanded years before. He at once began
love-making, and in spite of his ugliness succeeded in winning
the heart of the lady to whom his colonel was attached; this led
to such scandal that his father obtained a lettre de cachet, and
the young scapegrace was imprisoned in the isle of Ré. 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.
Further, they had the effect of sobering the culprit, and the
more creditable part of his life did not begin till he left Vincennes.
Mirabeau did not develop his great qualities of mind and character
until his youthful excesses were over, and it was not till 1781
that these began to appear. On being released, the young count
obtained leave to accompany as a volunteer the French expedition
to Corsica. After his return, he tried to keep on good terms
with his father, and in 1772 he married a rich heiress, Marie
Emilie, daughter of the marquess de Marignane, an alliance
procured for him by his father. His wild extravagance, however,
forced his father to forestall his creditors by securing his detention
in semi-exile in the country, where he wrote his earliest
extant work, the Essai sur le despotisme. His violent disposition
now led him to quarrel with a country gentleman who had
insulted his sister, and his semi-exile was changed by lettre de
cachet into imprisonment in the Château d’If. In 1775 he was
removed to the castle of Joux, to which, however, he was not
very closely confined, having full leave to visit in the town of
Pontarlier. Here he met Marie Thérèse de Monnier, his Sophie
as he called her. Of his behaviour nothing too strong can be
said: he was introduced into the house as a friend, and betrayed
his trust by inducing Mme de Monnier to fall in love with him.
The affair ended by his escaping to Switzerland, where Sophie
joined him; they then went to Holland, where he lived by hack-work
for the booksellers; meanwhile Mirabeau had been condemned
to death at Pontarlier for rapt et vol, and in May 1777
he was seized by the French police, and imprisoned by a lettre
de cachet in the castle of Vincennes.
During his imprisonment he seems to have learnt to control his passions from their very exhaustion, for the early part of his confinement is marked by the indecent letters to Sophie (first published in 1793), and the obscene Erotica biblion and Ma conversion, while to the later months belongs his political work of any value, the Lettres de cachet, published after his liberation (1782). It exhibits an accurate knowledge of French constitutional history skilfully applied in an attempt to show that an existing actual grievance was not only philosophically unjust but constitutionally illegal. 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. 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. He then intervened in the suit pending between his father and mother before the parlement of Paris, and attacked the ruling powers so violently that he had to leave France and again go to Holland, and try to live by literary work. About this time began his connexion with Mme de Nehra, the daughter of Zwier van Haren, a Dutch statesman and political writer, and a woman of a far higher type than Sophie, more educated, more refined, and more capable of appreciating Mirabeau’s good points. His life was strengthened by the love of his petite horde, Mme de Nehra, his adopted son, Lucas de Montigny, and his little dog Chico. After a period of work in Holland he betook himself to England, where his treatise on lettres de cachet had been much admired, being translated into English in 1787, and where he was soon admitted into the best Whig literary and political society of London, through his old schoolfellow Gilbert Elliot, who had now inherited his father’s baronetcy and estates, and become a leading Whig member of parliament. Of all his English friends none seem to have been so intimate with him as the 1st marquess of Lansdowne, better known as Lord Shelburne, and Mr, afterwards Sir Samuel, Romilly. The latter became particularly attached to him, and really understood his character; and it is strange that his remarks upon Mirabeau in the fragment of autobiography which he left, and Mirabeau’s letters to him, should have been neglected by French writers. Romilly was introduced to Mirabeau by Sir Francis D’Ivernois (1757–1842), and readily undertook to translate into English the Considérations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus, which Mirabeau had written in 1785. Romilly writes thus of him in his autobiography:—
“The count was difficult enough to please; he was sufficiently impressed with the beauties of the original. He went over every part of the translation with me, observed on every passage in which justice was not done to the thought or the force of the expression lost, and made many useful criticisms. During this occupation we had occasion to see one another often, and became very intimate; and, as he had read much, had seen a great deal of the world, was acquainted with all the most distinguished persons who at that time adorned either the royal court or the republic of letters in France; had a great knowledge of French and Italian literature, and possessed very good taste, his conversation was extremely interesting and not a little instructive. I had such frequent opportunities of seeing him at this time, and afterwards at a much more important period of his life, that I think his character was well known to me. I doubt whether it has been so well known to the world, and I am convinced that great injustice has been done him. 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. His vanity was certainly excessive; but I have no doubt that, in his public conduct as well as in his writings, he was desirous of doing good, that his ambition was of the noblest kind, and that he proposed to himself the noblest ends. He was, however, like many of his countrymen, who were active in the calamitous Revolution which afterwards took place, not sufficiently scrupulous about the means by which those ends were to be accomplished. He indeed to some degree professed this; and more than once I have heard him say that there were occasions upon which ‘la petite morale était ennemie de la grande.’ It is not surprising that with such maxims as these in his mouth, unguarded in his expressions and careless of his reputation, he should have afforded room for the circulation of many stories to his disadvantage.”
This luminous judgment, it must be noted, was written by a man of acknowledged purity of life, who admired Mirabeau in early life not when he was a statesman, but when he was only a struggling literary man. The Considérations sur l’ordre
