Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/213

Rh A corner house looking out on the Cours at Grasse, between the rue du Cours and the Passage Mirabeau, is the old town residence of the family of Cabris. The noblesse of the neighbourhood had their town residence at Grasse, and there spent the winter in such gaieties as could be got up between them. In this house, No. 2 and 4 of the street, lived Louise, Marchioness de Grasse-Cabris, the youngest and most beautiful of the sisters of the famous Mirabeau. She had been married when quite young to the Marquis, who was a prey to ungovernable fits of temper, and was considerably her senior. But there was an excuse for his violence in the dissipated conduct of his wife. The Mirabeaus were an old Provençal family which had migrated from Florence through some of the civic broils in the twelfth century. The patronymic was Arrigheti, which got by degrees Frenchified into Riquetti. The estate and title of Mirabeau were only acquired in 1568, by Jean Riquetti, who was first consul of Marseilles.

The Mirabeaus were a race of men singularly energetic, independent, and audacious. They boasted that they were all hewn out of one block, without joints. They were proud, rude, with original and strongly marked features, free-and-easy morals, and violent tempers. Jean Antoine de Riquetti, Marquis de Mirabeau, brigadier of infantry, was wounded in defending a bridge in the battle of Cassans. He fell, and all the hostile army passed over him. His old sergeant, seeing him down, put an iron pot over his master's head, and fled. This pot saved Mirabeau's life, but his right arm was broken, and he was so damaged that he was obliged to wear a silver collar to keep his head upright. He