the Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the appointed year 1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the light: roughest lion's whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion (for our old Marquis too was lionlike, most unconquerable, kindly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dogcart of Political Economy, and be a Friend of Men; he will not be Thou, but must and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce lawsuits, "whole family save one in prison, and three-score Lettres-de-Cachet” 1 for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.

Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Rhé, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes; - all by Lettre-de-Cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife); the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear: "the clatter teeth (claque-dents)!" snarls singular old Mirabeau; discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two chattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.

But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants, to prime ministers, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it is a social, loving heart, that wild unconquerable one: more especially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could not but "steal,"

1 Lettres-de-Cachet: orders signed by the king which authorized the summary arrest and imprisonment of the person named. No trial was allowed and the term of secret detention which followed was often long.

and be beheaded for - in effigy! For indeed hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead to Ali's admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In War, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In Literature, he has written on Despotism, on Lettres-de-Cachet; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean,1 Obscenities, Profanities; Books on the Prussian Monarchy, on Cagliostro,2 on Calonne,3 on the Water Companies of Paris, each Book comparable: we will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire; huge, smoky, sudden! The firepan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters, and ass-paniers, of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is mine!

Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man himself he can make his. "All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)!" snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of qualities for him. In that forty years' "struggle against despotism," he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union: this man can live self-sufficing yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him; a born king of men!

But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he

1 Erotics Sapphic-Werterean: love poetry of a passionate and sentimental nature. Sappho, the great lyric poetess of Greece (600 B.C.); Werther, see p. 6, note 2.

2 Cagliostro (1743-1795) was an Italian adventurer and quack-doctor who came to Paris in 1785. For a time he was much in vogue with fashionable society because of his pretended knowledge of the occult.

3 Calonne (1734-1802) was Minister of Finances from 1785 to 1787. His rather fantastic plan of reform was opposed by the nobles and he resigned, discredited and financially ruined.

has "made away with (humé, swallowed) all Formulas"; a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it: for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles; but with an eye! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there: a Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled "forty years against despotism," and "made away with all formulas," shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism; to make away with her old formulas, - having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with such formulas; and even go bare, if need be, till she have found

new ones.

Toward such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke. And now it has got air; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that smouldering, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough; then victory over that; and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wondersign of an amazed Europe; - and then lies hollow, cold for ever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest of them all: in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none second to thee.

But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles;

his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future times; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green. That greenish-coloured (verdâtre) individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre.1 The son of an Advocate; his father founded mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftily educated; he had brisk Camille Desmoulins. for school-mate in the College of Louis le Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favour of a younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed; home to paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case there and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, "in favour of the first Franklin thunder-rod." With a strict painful mind, an understanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese; and he faithfully does justice to the people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging; and the strictminded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strictminded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions? Whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as smallale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar, — the mother of ever new alegar; till all France were grown acetous virulent? We shall see.

And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold

1 Robespierre (1759-1794) played a minor rôle in the early years of the Revoluton. By extreme caution and by his skill in acquiring a reputation for unswerving virtue and sincere interest in the welfare of the people, he gradually increased his influence in Paris and later in the National Convention. Largely responsible for the organization of the System of Terror, he was supreme during the months which succeeded the death of Danton. For a time his popularity far transcended that of any other man of the Revolution; but in July, 1794, he was destroyed by a coalition of political enemies who feared for their own lives. (See p. 225).

one other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner; doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and hygiène be a present aid: but, greater far, he can produce his "Report on the Penal Code;" and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais sauter le tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;" - whereat they all laugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Caesar's.

Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings from every heart, has the Processon of the Commons Deputies rolled by.

Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom it might be asked, What they specially have come for? Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game! - Remark, meanwhile, how D'Orléans1 affects to step before his own Order, and mingle with the Commons.

1 The duc d'Orleans sought to flatter the mob, already hoping, perhaps, that he might be chosen king if Louis were forced to abdicate. His subsequent intrigues for the crown were disgraceful and ultimately proved disastrous to himself.