The son of this man was Victor de Riquetti, who called himself “l’Ami des Hommes,” a fantastic hodge-podge of contradictions. He was a philanthropist and a despot, a feudalist, but also a reformer, a professed friend of mankind, but a tyrant in his own family. He hated superstition, but scoffed at “la canaille philosophique.” Separated from his wife, he was engaged in lawsuits with her for years, which published to all Provence the scandals of the domestic hearth of the House of Mirabeau. The eldest son of this man was Gabriel Honoré, the great orator, and the youngest daughter was Louise, Marchioness de Grasse-Cabris. The feudal castle of the Cabris is on the way to Draguignan. Cabris occupies a conical hill in a dreary limestone district, where the soil is so sparse that even the olive cannot flourish there—it exists, that is all. The place is supplied with water from cisterns that receive the rain from the roofs. Honoré was disfigured by smallpox at the age of three, and he retained thenceforth an extraordinary hideousness of aspect which struck his contemporaries, but which does not seem in the slightest to have impeded his success with women. His father declared that physically and morally he was a monster. The romance of his life begins when he was aged seventeen, when, owing to a love intrigue, and to debts, his father obtained a lettre de cachet and had him imprisoned in the isle of Ré. From that time ensued a pitiless struggle, a veritable duel, between the imperious father and the ungovernable son. In 1772 Honoré married Emilie de Marignane at Aix; she was a wealthy heiress, but he speedily dissipated her fortune. His father obtained an order that he should be interned at Manosque. But he broke bounds and came to Grasse to visit his sister. Two days later an indecent pasquinade appeared placarded over the walls of Grasse, containing aspersions on the characters of the principal ladies of rank who spent the winter there.
It was at once bruited abroad that Mirabeau and his sister, Mme. de Cabris, had concocted the lampoon between them. Mirabeau was incensed. He was too much of a gentleman thus to defame ladies; and he hunted out M. de Villeneuve-Mouans as the author of this report. He went after him one day, when this old gentleman was walking on the road bare-headed, with an umbrella spread, horsewhipped him, and broke the umbrella over his shoulders.
The consequence was that a lettre de cachet was taken out against Louise; but on investigation it turned out that it was the Marquis de Grasse-Cabris, the husband of Louise, who was the author of the scurrilous lampoon, and that Honoré had known nothing about it.
When the Revolution broke out, the Marquis fled. The Castle of Cabris was sacked by the mob, and Louise and her husband lived for ten years in great poverty as emigrés.
When, finally, she returned to Provence it was to ruined Mirabeau. The castle had been wrecked, but she contrived to have a cottage built out of the ruins for herself and for her husband, who had sunk into dotage.
The brother of the great orator and of Louise de Cabris was André Boniface, Deputy to the Estates-General for the nobility of Limoges. His excesses at table, and his corpulence, procured for him the nickname of Mirabeau Tonneau. Gabriel Honoré reprimanded him for ascending the tribune when he was drunk. “Why,” he replied, “you have monopolised all the vices of the family, and have left but this one to me.” “In any other family but ours,” he said, “I would pass as a disgrace. In mine, I am its most respectable member.” He emigrated to Germany. An epigram was composed on him:—
“L’horreur de l’eau, l’amour du vin
Le retiendront au bord du Rhin.”
Grasse, as already said, is an admirable centre for excursions, and no excursion is finer than that up the Gorge of the Loup. It is not often that commercial enterprise adds to picturesqueness of scene; but this it has at the entrance to the Gorge. There the railway makes a bold sweep over a really beautiful viaduct, this itself an addition to the scene. But further, in order to supply electric force to Nice for its trams and lighting, a canal has been bored in the precipice on the right bank of the Loup, at a great elevation, to bring the water from an upper fall, so as, by means of a turbine, to accumulate the required power; and the falls of this stream at the opening of the ravine are of great beauty.
It is hard to decide which is most beautiful, the view of the mouth of the ravine, with the waterfall foaming down the cliff beside it, as seen from the hill-side as the train swings down from the direction of Nice, or whether from the side approached from Grasse, whence up the Gorge is obtained a glimpse of snowy peaks.
