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Rh star and his last louis-d'or at faro; a Samson who tears down the pillars of the state to bury in the ruins his threatening creditors; a Hercules who at the parting roads of life accommodates himself to both ladies, and who recreates and refreshes himself in the arms of Vice from the exertions of Virtue; "an Ariel-Caliban, flashing with genius and ugliness," whom the poetry of love sobered when the poetry of reason had intoxicated him; a transfigured, glorified profligate of Freedom, worthy of great worship, a thing of doubtful nature (Zweiterwesen), whom only Jules Janin could depict.

And it is by the very same moral contradictions of his nature and life that Mirabeau was the representative of his age, which was just as reprobate and sublime, so deeply in debt and rich, who while in prison wrote the most lascivious romances, yet at the same time the noblest books of freedom, and who afterwards, though