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238 press those with whom he came into contact with a sense of his extraordinary powers. His uncle, who had no great love for him, says: "Unless the cleverest impostor in the world, he is of the finest stuff for the making of a pope, a captain by sea or land, a chancellor, or even an agriculturist."

Shortly after his return from Corsica, young Mirabeau married a wealthy parti, and settled down to a provincial life. But his idea of a quiet country life was all his own, he was soon in debt, and indulged himself in a violence of conduct, a viciousness of living and an overbearingness of manner that surpassed the worst eccentricities of his forefathers. His wife was not much better, and was unfaithful; finally a disgraceful and famous fracas, in which Madame de Cabris and Monsieur de Mouan were concerned, resulted in the intervention of the Marquis de Mirabeau, who obtained a lettre de cachet in virtue of which his unruly son was relegated to a royal prison. The restraint he was placed under appears to have been light; it allowed him sufficient liberty to make the acquaintance of the very commonplace Sophie, Marquise de Monnier; this lady, whose husband was too old to attract her, fell in love with the hideously ugly, but magnetically attractive prisoner. In the end she eloped with him, the guilty pair escaping to Holland with what of the husband's money the fair one had been able to purloin. It was during this first sojourn abroad that Mirabeau developed the power, which he had not long since discovered, of writing for the press. Pamphlets and reviews of books of a democratic character soon made him a name as an eloquent and dangerous pamphleteer. He might have resided in peace in Holland, but with characteristic violence in one of his productions he indulged himself in the luxury of a virulent attack on his father and friends; this resulted in his prompt arrest through the action of the French embassy at the Hague. In his absence from France he had been condemned to decapitation, but his fate was imprisonment at Vincennes, where he was destined to pass the next four years of his life.

It was while thus imprisoned, that Mirabeau composed his correspondence with Sophie, long considered his best work, the most effective passages of which should be read with a considerable grain of rhetorical salt. But this is not the place in which to dwell on this famous literary incident. The termination of his seclusion came as the result of the intercession of his father and of his wife, which he did not hesitate to abjectly entreat.

Then followed stormy times. The old marquis, the young count, and their wives, plunged into the vortex of conjugal and family disputes. Twisting and turning, lying and quibbling, they amazed the