Mirabeau, the Demi-God, Being the True and Romantic Story of His Life
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1 ; -; ;,: -';,.'" . DC 7%L CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Mrs.O.G.'-'uerlac DATE °ue JAN * i m Cornell University Library DC 146.M67T86 Mirabeau the demi-god. being the true a II 3 1924 024 303 186 MIRABEAU Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024303186 -Mom, tzn. 4*i4/u*(H*i& £y Jt. 5"A jtail aJfet &. ,Wt«[ MIRABEAU THE DEMI-GOD BEING THE TRUE AND ROMANTIC STORY OF HIS LIFE AND ADVENTURES W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE AUTHOR OF " COURT BEAUTIES OF OLD WHITEHALL " A GIRL OF THE MULTITUDE," ETC. ILLUSTRATED LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MCMVII L/f 6 f a^ [All rights reserved.'] DEDICATORY LETTER Dear Madame van de Velde,— In asking you to accept the dedication of this book, whose progress you have watched with so much interest, there are two matters in connection with it on which, I think, some explanation is due to others. First, as regards the portrait I have attempted to paint of Mirabeau : There are few historical characters of whom so much is known as Mirabeau, none whom it is so impossible to describe accurately or to consider dispassionately. Even his most " scientific " biographer has been unable to conceal a prejudice that closely resembles personal spite. In Lomenie's book Mirabeau is a monster, his father, the implacable and selfish Marquis, is described as a paragon of virtue, while something very much like a nimbus decorates the head of the odious Madame de Pailly. Yet Lomenie's book is a standard authority, at least as far as the careful and orderly arrangement of the minutest details of his subject is concerned. It is in the interpretation that he has put upon these details that this " scientific " biographer has failed. For the fact is Mirabeau was an exaggeration, and in writing of him one unconsciously falls into an exaggeration of panegyric or invective. There seems to be no middle course between loving and hating him. I frankly admit that I have preferred to see in him only his nobler and what I believe to be his fundamental qualities, and it has been my object to convey my sympathetic impression that he sinned far less than he was sinned against. There are many, no doubt, who will hold the opposite opinion with equal persistency, and perhaps with an equal lack : vi DEDICATORY LETTER of sobriety. But if I have erred, I have erred with Lamartine and Michelet, Sainte-Beuve and Carlyle. My chief regret is that I have not paid tribute enough to my hero. I have felt too intensely the indescribable charm of his vivid personality to be able to convey it to others. Secondly, as regards the frame of this portrait I should like to have written a biography of Mirabeau, to have dug out of the eight volumes of Lucas de Montigny the one that Carlyle said they contained. But the more I meditated on the subject, the more the "novel" in his extraordinary career appealed to my instinct as a novelist. The amount of information, however, with which in my research I was overwhelmed speedily disabused me of any such idea, or my novel must have rivalled Montigny's biography in bulk. In the end, unwilling to abandon my desire to write a book on Mirabeau, I decided to adopt the present makeshift, in which the true and romantic story of his life practically tells itself, so to speak. To avoid any charge of striving after the eclat of historical research, I have refrained from adding the notes with which it is so easy to adorn a work of this kind. But to satisfy the curiosity of those who may be inclined to question the accuracy of details that seem doubtful, I have appended a bibliography of the works from which I have drawn my materials. In this connec- tion I would state in defence of the dialogue that it is seldom imaginary ; when not the words actually uttered by the speakers as historically recorded, it has been composed from their correspondence. For example, in Chapter I., Part I., pages 22 to 35, the dialogue has been taken almost verbatim from the letters of the Marquis de Mirabeau. Believe me, dear Madame Van de Velde, Yours faithfully, W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE. London, October, 1907. CONTENTS PAGE PROLOGUE ....... I PART I THE BOY CHAPTER I. A QUESTION OF ECONOMY . 13 II. QUIXOTE-BRUTUS RIQUETI . .36 in. "all vassan" ..... 52 IV. THE HOME INFLUENCE . .60 V. THE HOUSE OF CORRECTION • • • 73 VI. THE KING OF THE SCHOOL . .82 VII. AT SAINTES ..... 92 VIII. THE CORSICAN FILIBUSTER .... I04 IX. UN-PIERRE-BUFFIERED . 115 PART II THE MAN I. COURTSHIP A LA MIRABEAU .... 133 II. DEBT'S CARNIVAL .... I48 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE l( III. MARRIAGE A LA MODE . >3 IV. VENGEANCE A LA MIRABEAU—PREMEDITATED . 175 V. VENGEANCE A LA MIRABEAU—UNPREMEDITATED . 189 VI. PERSECUTION . 206 VII. TEMPTATION ...... 222 VIII. FALL AND FLIGHT .... 234 IX. THE PURSUIT ...... 248 X. CAPTURE ...... 265 XI. THE TO-MORROW OF A GRAND PASSION . 277 PART III THE DEMON OF THE IMPOSSIBLE I. THE FRESH START .... 295 II. HERCULES IN SEARCH OF A CLUB . 313 III. HERCULES FINDS HIS CLUB . 325 IV. THE FIRST KING OF THE REVOLUTION . 337 V. TREASON A LA MIRABEAU . 347 VI. HERCULES AND THE HYDRA . 365 VII. THE LAST LABOUR OF HERCULES . 381 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HONORE GABRIEL DE RIQUETI, COMTE DE MIRABEAU Frontispiece After Gnerin. "GYP" (LA COMTESSE DE MARTEL) Facing p. 2 THE MARQUIS DE MIRABEAU 16 DR. QUESNAY 22 THE DURANCE AT MIRABEAU 38 MADAME DE POMPADOUR . 58 After Boucher. MALESHERBES, THE KEEPER OF THE SEALS 68 DUC DE NIVERNAIS , 104 THE BAILLI DE MIRABEAU . 118 MIRABEAU—THE TOWN AND CASTLE 158 LOUIS XVI. 225 THE MARQUISE DE MONNIER 228 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 279 After Latour. PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE . 284 MIRABEAU'S CELL AT VINCENNES . 286 THE COUNCIL OF STATE. ONE OF ITS LAST SITTINGS, THE DUC D'ORLEANS DEFYING THE KING 307 From an old print. x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS calonne ...... Facing p. 314 MADAME DE NEHRA ..... » 3^ THE STATES GENERAL .... „ 32° From an old print. NECKER ...... „ 326 COMTE D'ARTOIS ..... „ 330 MIRABEAU DEFYING THE MARQUIS DE BP.EZE . „ 334 After Raffet THE PRINCE DE LAMBEX ENTERING PARIS . „ 338 From an old print THE BANQUET OF THE BODY-GUARDS AT VER- SAILLES, OCTOBER I, 1789 ... „ 340 From an old print. REQUIEM FOR THE CITIZENS KILLED IN THE SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE, AUGUST 5, 1789 . „ 343 From an old print. THE TORTURE OF FOULON .... „ 344 From an old print. VERSAILLES ON THE 6TH OCTOBER, 1789 . „ 346 From an old print. MARIE ANTOINETTE ..... „ 352 LAFAYETTE ...... „ 356 THE CONQUERED COURT PASSING ST. CLOUD ON THE 6TH OCTOBER .... ,,361 From an old print. MARAT ...... „ 370 THE FLIGHT OF MESDAMES .... „ 376 From an old print MIRABEAU'S FUNERAL IN NOTRE DAME . „ 394 From an old print. BIBLIOGRAPHY Subject. Author. Memoires dc Mirabeau Lucas de Montigny Les Mirabeau Lotninie La Comtesse de Rochefort et ses Amis Lomdnie La Fin du XVIH 1*" Siecle Lucien Perrey Un Petit-Neveu de Mazarin Lucien Perrey Sophie de Monnier et Mirabeau Paul Cottin Lettres a Julie Dauphin Meunier Les Amours de Mirabeau Benjamin Gastineau Vicomte de Mirabeau E. Berger Souvenirs de Mirabeau Etienne Dumont Mademoiselle Navarre A. Joly Life and Letters of the Earl of Minto Countess of Minto Memoir of Hugh Elliot Countess of Minto The French Revolution Carlyle Mirabeau Carlyle Causeries du Lundi (Mirabeau) Sainte-Beuve Etude sur Mirabeau Victor Hugo Histoire de France % Michelet Essai sur la Vie privee de Mirabeau Cadet de Gassicourt Journal de la Maladie et de la Mort de Mirabeau ... Cabanis Les Hommes de la Revolution (Mirabeau) Lamartine Mirabeau E. Rousse Mirabeau P. F. Willert CEuvres completes de Mirabeau, especially the " Correspondance du Donjon de Vincennes." MIRABEAU THE DEMIGOD PROLOGUE ABOUT seventy miles south of Paris in the Loiret, one of the three departments into which the old province of Orleanais is now divided, there is an insigni- ficant village that goes by the rather grand name of Le Bignon-Mirabeau. In 1749, when Gabriel Honor6 de Riqueti was born here, this village, as insignificant then as it is now, was known merely as Bignon. The slight alteration in the name is a very fair index of the extent of the changes that have occurred in an interval of some one hundred and fifty odd years. Time apparently has fallen asleep at Bignon, and if awakened would be far less surprised than Rip van Winkle at what he saw. 'Tis true the inhabitants dress in a fashion somewhat different from that which was in vogue when Comte Gabriel was a boy, and the great folk at the old chateau where he was born are no longer the Mirabeaus. But if it were possible for Madame la Marquise to look out of the windows of that house in which she passed so many unhappy years, her eyes would behold the same shady gardens and stone terraces as were in existence when she first came to Bignon. Or if M. le Marquis the Friend of Men—saving always his own family —could saunter down the dusty white road into one of the green meadows gilded by the sun where the people are at play, perhaps he could hardly tell the 2 1 2 BIGNON difference between a fete champStre of to-day and the "festivites villageoises" of which he was the bene- volent patron in his own day.