Page:Mirabeau and the French constitution in the years 1789 adn 1790 (IA mirabeaufrenchco00flin).pdf/17



In April 1789, France was awaiting with hope and anxiety In the the approaching assembly of the estates of the realm. same month, Gouverneur Morris, then a resident of Paris, re- viewing in his diary the political situation, closed with these words: "It will depend much on the chapter of accidents who will govern the states general or whether they will be at all governable. Gods! what a theatre this is for a first rate character." Two years from that time, Mirabeau had finished his remarkable career commenting upon his death, Morris wrote as follows: "I have seen this man in the short space of two years, hissed, honored, hated and mourned. Enthusiasm has just now presented him gigantic; time and reflection will shrink that stature." Although this prediction has not been realized — for viewed through the vista of a hundred years, Mirabeau still towers above his contemporaries, a giant among pigmies — yet the writer saw clearly and expressed in sententious language, two most important facts, the greatness of the opportunity and the meteor-like career of the man who sought to avail himself of it.

Mirabeau had literally been trained for his great role. From early manhood, he had felt the heavy hand of the government under which he lived, and the weary months of confinement in French dungeons implanted within him a bitter