Too early for himself, too late for the Court, Mirabeau sold himself to the Court, and the Court bought him. He staked his reputation for a pension and an embassy: Cromwell was on the verge of bartering his future for a title and the Order of the Garter. Notwithstanding his haughtiness, Mirabeau did not rate himself high enough. Nowadays, when the abundance of cash and places has raised the price of consciences, there is not a street-boy but costs hundreds of thousands of francs and the leading honours of the State to buy. The grave released Mirabeau from his promises, and shielded him from the perils which he would probably not have been able to conquer: his life would have shown his weakness in good; his death left him in possession of his strength in evil.
At the end of dinner, the discussion turned upon Mirabeau's enemies; I found myself by his side and had not spoken a word. He looked me in the face with his eyes of pride, vice and genius, and laying his hand upon my shoulder, said:
"They will never forgive me my superiority!"
I still feel the pressure of that hand, as though Satan had touched me with his fiery claw. When Mirabeau fixed his look upon a young mute, had he a presentiment of my future condition? Did he think that he would one day figure in my recollections? I was destined to become the historian of great personages: they have defiled before me without my hanging to their mantles to make them drag me with them to posterity.
Mirabeau has already undergone the metamorphosis which is wrought in those whose memory is destined to survive: carried from the Pantheon to the sewer, and back from the sewer to the Pantheon, he has raised himself to the full height of that time which today forms his pedestal. We no longer behold the real Mirabeau, but the idealized Mirabeau, the Mirabeau as the painters depict him, in order to make him the symbol or the myth of the period which he represents: he thus becomes both more false and more true. From among so many reputations, so many actors, so many events, so many ruins, there will remain but three men, attached to each of the three great revolutionary epochs: Mirabeau for the aristocracy, Robespierre for the democracy, Bonaparte for the despotism; the monarchy has none: France has paid dear for three reputations which virtue is unable to acknowledge!
*
The sittings of the National Assembly offered a spectacle of an interest which our "Chambers" are far from approaching. One rose early to find room in the crowded galleries. The deputies arrived eating, talking, gesticulating; they formed groups in the various parts of the house, according to their opinions. The orders of the day were read; after that, the subject agreed upon was set forth, or else an extraordinary motion. There was no question of any insipid point of law; rarely did some scheme of destruction fail to form part of the proceedings. The members spoke for or against; each spoke extempore as best he could. The debates grew stormy; the galleries joined in the discussion, applauded and cheered, hissed and hooted the speakers. The president rang his bell, the deputies apostrophized each other from bench to bench. Mirabeau the Younger[371] took his competitor by the collar; Mirabeau the Elder cried:
"Silence, the 'thirty votes'!"
One day I was seated behind the royalist opposition; before me was a Dauphiné nobleman, swarthy of visage, short of stature, who jumped upon his seat with rage and said to his friends: