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204 him by court intrigues and the confessional, and placing him in those of the Third Estate. Mirabeau was the herald of that constitutional monarchy which, in my opinion, was the want of the time, and which, more or less democratically formulated, is now needed by us in Germany.

It was this constitutional monarchy which did the greatest injury to the Count, for the Revolutionary men, who did not understand him, saw in it a desertion or falling off, and thought he had sold the Revolution. They rivalled, in abusing him, the aristocrats, who hated him because they knew that Mirabeau, by destroying their business of privileges, would save and rejuvenate the kingdom at their expense. But just as the wretched conduct (misère) of the privileged class repulsed him, so was the coarseness of most of the demagogues destructive, and all the more because they, in the mad unchecked manner which we well know, already preached the Republic. It is interesting to read in the newspapers of that time to what strange resorts those democrats who did not as yet dare oppose him openly had recourse to annul the monarchical tendency of the great tribune. So, for example, when Mirabeau once expressed himself distinctly as a royalist, these journals could only help themselves by declaring that, as Mirabeau very often did not write his own speeches, it came to pass that the address