History of the Girondists, Volume I | Page 6

lips. His
eloquence, imperative as the law, is now the talent of giving force to
reason. His language lights and inspires every thing; and though almost
alone at this moment, he has the courage to remain alone. He braves
envy, hatred, murmurs, supported by the strong feeling of his
superiority. He dismisses with disdain the passions which have hitherto

beset him. He will no longer serve them when his cause no longer
needs them. He speaks to men now only in the name of his genius. This
title is enough to cause obedience to him. His power is based on the
assent which truth finds in all minds, and his strength again reverts to
him. He contests with all parties, and rises superior to one and all. All
hate him because he commands; and all seek him because he can serve
or destroy them. He does not give himself up to any one, but negotiates
with each: he lays down calmly on the tumultuous element of this
assembly, the basis of the reformed constitution: legislation, finance,
diplomacy, war, religion, political economy, balances of power, every
question he approaches and solves, not as an Utopian, but as a
politician. The solution he gives is always the precise mean between
the theoretical and the practical. He places reason on a level with
manners, and the institutions of the land in consonance with its habits.
He desires a throne to support the democracy, liberty in the chambers,
and in the will of the nation, one and irresistible in the government. The
characteristic of his genius, so well defined, so ill understood, was less
audacity than justness. Beneath the grandeur of his expression is
always to be found unfailing good sense. His very vices could not
repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding. At the foot of
the tribune he was a man devoid of shame or virtue: in the tribune he
was an honest man. Abandoned to private debauchery, bought over by
foreign powers, sold to the court in order to satisfy his lavish
expenditure, he preserved, amidst all this infamous traffic of his powers,
the incorruptibility of his genius. Of all the qualities of a great man of
his age, he was only wanting in honesty. The people were not his
devotees, but his instruments,--his own glory was the god of his
idolatry; his faith was posterity; his conscience existed but in his
thought; the fanaticism of his idea was quite human; the chilling
materialism of his age had crushed in his heart the expansion, force,
and craving for imperishable things. His dying words were "sprinkle
me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter upon
eternal sleep." He was especially of his time, and his course bears no
impress of infinity. Neither his character, his acts, nor his thoughts have
the brand of immortality. If he had believed in God, he might have died
a martyr, but he would have left behind him the religion of reason and
the reign of democracy. Mirabeau, in a word, was the reason of the

people; and that is not yet the faith of humanity!
IV.
Grand displays cast a veil of universal mourning over the secret
sentiments which his death inspired to all parties. Whilst the various
belfries tolled his knell, and minute guns were fired; whilst, in a
ceremony that had assembled two hundred thousand spectators, they
awarded to a citizen the funeral obsequies of a monarch; whilst the
Pantheon, to which they conveyed his remains, seemed scarcely a
monument worthy of such ashes,--what was passing in the depths of
men's hearts?
The king, who held Mirabeau's eloquence in pay, the queen, with
whom he had nocturnal conferences, regretted him, perhaps, as the last
means of safety: yet still he inspired them with more terror than
confidence; and the humiliation of a crowned head demanding succour
from a subject must have felt comforted at the removal of that
destroying power which itself fell before the throne did. The court was
avenged by death for the affronts which it had undergone. He was to
the nobility merely an apostate from his order. The climax of its shame
must have been to be one day raised by him who had abased it. The
National Assembly had grown weary of his superiority; the Duc
d'Orleans felt that a word from this man would unfold and crush his
premature aspirations; M. de La Fayette, the hero of the bourgeoisie,
must have been in dread of the orator of the people. Between the
dictator of the city and the dictator of the tribune there must have been
a secret jealousy. Mirabeau, who had never assailed M. de La Fayette
in his discourses, had often in conversation allowed words to escape
with respect to his rival which