[135] Mignet says, "The Constitutional Church establishment was not the work of the modern philosophers, but was devised by the Jansenists, or rigid party." No doubt, the Jansenists, dupes of the philosophers, fancied themselves guides instead of blind instruments.
[136] It was their custom to sit on the highest rows of benches in the hall.
[137] Mémoires du Marquis des Ferrieres, l. iii.
[138] Mémoires de Bailli, 16 Août.
[139] Prudhomme, tom. ii., p. 297.
[140] See Mignet, tom. i., p. 126; Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 128.
"I have had in my hands a letter of Mirabeau, written for the purpose of being shown to the King. He there made offer of all his means to restore to France an efficient and respected, but a limited monarchy; he made use, among others, of this remarkable expression: 'I should lament to have laboured at nothing but a vast destruction.'"—M. de Staël, vol. i., p. 401.
"He (Mirabeau) received for a short time a pension of 20,000 francs, or £800 a-month, first from the Comte D'Artois, and afterwards the King; but he considered himself an agent intrusted with their affairs, and he accepted those pensions not to be governed by, but to govern, those who granted them."—Dumont, p. 230.
[141] Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 126.
[142] Mirabeau bore much of his character imprinted on his person and features. He was short, bull-necked, and very strongly made. A quantity of thick matted hair hung round features of a coarse and exaggerated character, strongly scarred and seamed. "Figure to your mind," he said, describing his own countenance to a lady who knew him not, "a tiger who has had the small-pox." When he talked of confronting his opponents in the Assembly, his favourite phrase was, "I will show them La Hure," that is, the boar's head, meaning his own tusked and shaggy countenance.—S.