Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

[E] Literal Translation:—Sing; celebrate the upholder of Reason. Ah! of all men who are not slaves Voltaire is the fellow-citizen.

Mirabeau, who next to Voltaire was declared worthy of the honours of the Pantheon, was descended from an ancient and powerful family of Florentine origin. Riquetti, originally Arrigheti, was the name of the family, that of Mirabeau being derived from an estate which they acquired when, after being banished from Florence in the thirteenth century, they settled in Provence. The Mirabeaus were celebrated from father to son for their energy, independence, and daring. One of their boasts was that they were all of a piece, “without a joint.” Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, the greatest orator that the Revolution produced, was the son of the Marquis of Mirabeau, who is reputed to have introduced the study of political economy into France. Disfigured at the age of three by the small-pox, he preserved that remarkable ugliness which produced such a strong impression upon his contemporaries, together with that leonine countenance in which intelligence and expression triumphed over superficial hideousness. It was in allusion to his ugliness as well as to his violent passions and his indomitable character, that Mirabeau’s father, who never loved him, said of his son that he was a monster, physically and morally. Placed under different masters, he learnt with surprising facility ancient and modern languages. Lagrange taught him mathematics, and he also studied drawing and music, besides occupying himself with gymnastics. Having revealed at an early age his impetuous disposition, he was placed by his father at the École Militaire, as if with a view to his correction. Here he devoured all the works on the art of war, and at the age of seventeen came out of the school as officer. At this point begins the romance of his life. His debts and a love intrigue caused his father to shut him up in the island of Ré, in virtue of a lettre de cachet obtained for that purpose. Nor was this the only one that the severe parent procured in view of his son’s better behaviour. Sent to Corsica with his regiment, Mirabeau distinguished himself in various ways, among others by writing a history which his father destroyed because it contained philosophical ideas which, according to the parent’s view, were unorthodox. The youthful Mirabeau made a better impression on one of his uncles, who wrote about him: “Either he will be the cleverest satirist in the universe, or the greatest European general on land or sea, or minister, or chancellor, or Pope, or anything else that may please him.”

In 1772 he married at Aix, in Provence, a rich heiress, Émilie de Mirignane by name, whose dowry he was rapidly spending when the ever-watchful father came forward and procured against him a legal interdict, which cut him off from all credit and obliged him to reside within the limits of a particular town. Here, inspired, no doubt, by the situation, he composed in hot haste his “Essay on Despotism,” which deals, however, not merely with the arbitrary exercise of power, but with such concomitants of political despotism as immoderate taxation and standing armies. An insult having been offered to one of his sisters, Mirabeau broke through the rules imposed upon him, and, always at the suggestion of his father, was captured, this time to be imprisoned in the castle of If: familiar to the readers of Dumas’s “Monte Cristo.” Here he paid so much attention to the wife of the steward that it was found necessary to transfer him to another fortress. His new abode was close to Pontarlier; and he obtained permission to quit the fortress and take up his residence in this town. At Pontarlier he made the acquaintance of Sophie de Ruffey, the young wife of the Marquis de Monnier, to whom, under the name of “Sophie,” he was a few years afterwards, as a prisoner in the Bastille, to address the passionate letters generally known as “Lettres à Sophie.” His relations with Sophie, whom he induced to leave her husband in order to accompany him to Holland, brought upon him a criminal action and a tragic sentence. He was condemned to death, and not being present at the time and place fixed for his execution, was decapitated in effigy. He had fled with Sophie to Amsterdam, where, under the name of St. Matthew, he wrote largely for the booksellers who were accustomed to produce pamphlets and books which either had been or, as a matter of course, would have been forbidden in France. Besides original works, Mirabeau supplied the Dutch booksellers with translations from the English and the German. But the French[{280}] Government would not leave him in peace, and in 1777, his extradition having been applied for, he was arrested at Amsterdam, carried back to France, and imprisoned at Vincennes. He was allowed to write freely to his adored Sophie; and freely enough he did write to her.

THE PONT DU CARROUSEL AND THE LOUVRE, FROM THE QUAI MALAQUAIS.

The passionate letters were all copied in the Secretary’s Office; and it is only from these copies, as printed and published in 1792 by Manuel, procureur of the Commune of Paris, that the epistles are now known. They were obviously not written for general reading. Jotted down from day to day, without thought of anything but the woman he loved and the passion by which he was inspired, they contain passages which even persons without prudery (a fault charged by Mirabeau against Sophie’s mother) might have desired to see omitted; but they are eloquent, impassioned, and, though affected by the senses, written from the heart. During his captivity at Vincennes, which lasted forty-two months, Mirabeau composed a number of works, many of which, as mentioned in the letters to Sophie, seem to have been lost. He made for Sophie’s own private reading some edifying translations from the tales of Boccaccio and from the Basia of Johannes Secundus; and he wrote a novel that every one would not care to read, called “Ma Conversion.” Liberated from prison in December, 1780, he went straight to Pontarlier, where he constituted himself a prisoner. He wished to obtain a divorce for Sophie from her husband and for himself from his wife; and it is related that in the former case the husband was only too happy to pay the expenses of the suit. He also wrote an eloquent, indignant attack against lettres de cachet, which, not daring to publish it in France, he brought out in Switzerland. From Switzerland he went to London. After a time he returned to France, and in 1786, anxious as ever to play an active part in life, got himself sent by the Government on a secret mission to Prussia; where he was to study the effect that would probably be produced in Germany by the death of Frederick the Great, then imminent, the character of the Prussian prince who was to succeed him, and the possibility, moreover, of raising in Prussia a loan for France. Such missions, of which the precise object was never clearly defined, belonged to the system of the ancient régime. Mirabeau was present at the death of Frederick and at the inauguration of his successor; when with marvellous confidence he gave the new sovereign some advice as to the art and method of governing a great country. Mirabeau, meanwhile, did his work conscientiously as agent of the French court; addressing to the minister Calonne seventy letters, which were published in 1789, the year of the Revolution, under the title of “Secret History of the Court of Berlin, Letters[{281}] a French Traveller, from July, 1786, to January, 1787.” The book, full of satirical portraits and still more satirical observations, caused considerable scandal; and the parliament lost no time in ordering it to be burnt by the public executioner.

THE SEINE, BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE QUAI DES AUGUSTINS.