[258] "I have read many histories of revolutions, and can affirm what a Royalist avowed in 1791, that never had any great revolution cost less bloodshed and weeping. In reality, only one class, the clergy, was able, with any appearance of truth, to call itself robbed; and, nevertheless, the result of that spoliation was, that the great bulk of the clergy, starved under the old system for the emolument of a few prelates, had at length a comfortable livelihood."—Michelet, p. 417.
[259] "If I had never lived with Mirabeau," says Dumont, "I should never have known what a man can make of one day—what things may be placed within the interval of twelve hours. A day for this man is more than a week or a month is for others. The mass of things he guided on together was prodigious; from the scheming to the executing, not a moment lost."—Dumont, p. 311.
[260] Michelet, p. 333.
[261] Thiers, vol. i., p. 166. Ferrières, t. ii., p. 198.
[262] "Many of the emigrants had joined the army in a state of complete destitution. Others were spending improvidently the last relics of their fortunes. All were in good spirits, for the camp life was free and joyous. They confidently believed that the end of autumn would find them restored to their splendid homes, to their groves, to their forests, and to their dove-cots."—Chateaubriand's Memoirs of the Duke de Berri.
[263] See Recueil de divers Ecrits relatif à la Revolution, p. 62; also Chateaubriand's Memoirs of the Duke de Berri.
In reference to England Michelet remarks, with much truth: "The first power is aristocracy, the second aristocracy, and the third aristocracy. This aristocracy goes on incessantly recruiting its body with all those who grow rich. To be rich in order to be noble is the absorbing thought of the Englishman. Property, specially territorial and feudal, is the religion of the country."—Michelet's French Revolution, p. 432.
[264] "The meeting ended at half past five, and Mirabeau went to the house of his sister, his intimate and dear confidante, and said to her, 'I have pronounced my death-warrant. It is now all over with me, for they will kill me.'"—Michelet, p. 461.
[265] The peculiar character of Mirabeau is illustrated by the following well-authenticated anecdote. He was, on one occasion, reading a report to the Assembly upon some riots in Marseilles, which he affirmed were fomented by the partisans of the court. He was incessantly interrupted by the aristocratic party with such abusive epithets as "calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel." He stopped a moment, looked at them with an imperturbable smile, and, in his most honeyed tones, said, "Gentlemen, I wait till these amenities be exhausted."—Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 278.
[266] The English people were at this time generally in sympathy with the Revolution. The aristocratic government of England was in deadly hostility to it. In 1792, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then head scholar in Jesus College, Cambridge, wrote an Ode to France, commencing with the words,