On the occasion of her brother’s visit Louise gave a quiet dinner in her pavilion. The party consisted of her brother and herself, her lover Briançon and an unnamed lady who was invited, no doubt, to entertain Mirabeau. Before the meal was over the baron appeared on the upper terrace of his garden, in order to take the air before the sun went down. Louise pointed him out to her brother, told him what the baron had done and what she would do with that nobleman if she had the strength. Mirabeau at once jumped up from the table, stepped over into the baron’s garden and fell upon the unsuspecting man with explosive violence.
GRASSE: RUE SANS PEUR.
Now to introduce a comic element into a conflict of this kind it is essential that at least one of the combatants should be elderly and corpulent and that, by some means or another, an umbrella should be brought into the affair. All these factors were present. The baron was over fifty; he was very fat and, as the evening was hot, he carried an umbrella. Excessive perspiration, also, is considered to be conducive to humour.
Mirabeau, the statesman, flew at the fat man, bashed in his hat and, seizing the umbrella, proceeded to beat him on the head with it. Further he made the baron’s nose bleed and tore his clothes, especially about the neck.
He also kicked him. The fat baron, who was shaped like a melon, clung to the agile politician, with the result that they both rolled off the terrace on to the ledge below, where sober gardeners, with bent backs, were busy with the soil. These honest men were surprised to see two members of the aristocracy drop from a wall and roll along the ground, with an umbrella serving as a kind of axle, snarling like cats and using language that would have brought a blush to the cheek of a pirate.
Louise, on the terrace above, was beside herself with joy. She screamed, she clapped her hands, she stamped, she jumped with pure delight. She was in an ecstasy; and when a fresh rent appeared in the baron’s coat or when fresh mud appeared on his face as he rolled over and over, or when Mirabeau’s fist sounded upon him like a drum she was bent double with laughter.
Mirabeau was of course arrested for his part in this entertainment and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The prison to which he was sent was the famous Château d’If. In his confinement, however, he was consoled by thinking that he had given his sister the merriest day in her life.
The Mirabeau family was a peculiar one. The Marquis de Mirabeau hated his daughter and she, as cordially, hated him. The basis of the enmity was the fact that Louise sided with her mother in the constant quarrels upon which her parents were engaged. The marquis, who called his daughter Rongelime after the serpent in the fable, contrived to have her sent to the Ursuline convent at Sisteron, as a punishment for her many and scandalous misdeeds. The sisters were, no doubt, pleased to receive so noble a lady; but their pleasure was short-lived, for at the dinner table the marquise used such unusual language and told such improper stories that the convent was soon divided into two parties—those who were too horrified to associate with her and those who could not withstand the lure of the beautiful woman who said such thrillingly dreadful things.