Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of age, for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet smile, fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible, mild, and very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and ill-treated by her mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and in 1772 young Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.
No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious father refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His father-in-law offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's consent was indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau, harassed by creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments only set his father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured a lettre de cachet, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up, and to confine himself to the little town of Manosque.
Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted him, the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Château d'If, a gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.
On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a sort of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the event ensued which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In a word, we see Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the young wife of the aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where Mirabeau surrendered himself at the castle.
He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined by Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at Amsterdam on October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his principal means of subsistence from his literary labours, and this, perhaps, had been his motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for at that period the Dutch booksellers entered largely into literary speculations.
Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777. Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at Monilmontant, and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of Vincennes, and was subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in confinement for forty-two months. His release marked the end of his private life; his public and political life was about to begin.
II.--Into Political Life
The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote is that though the natural man may not be inclined to despotism, the social man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit, maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.
In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a treatise dealing with Washington and American independence. He was greatly delighted with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that nature is improved, not forced. All tells me that here the people are something; that every man enjoys the development and free exercise of his faculties, and that I am in another order of things."
But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst possible; and that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in the world, the English people are the least free of any."