Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/23

DEC. 1789] Feudalisms; of stratagems; too often visible leanings towards the Royalist side: a man suspect; whom Patriotism will unmask! Thus, in these June days, when the question, Who shall have right to declare war? comes on, you hear hoarse Hawkers sound dolefully through the streets, 'Grand Treason of Count Mirabeau, price only one sou';—because he pleads that it shall be not the Assembly, but the King! Pleads; nay prevails: for in spite of the hoarse Hawkers, and an endless Populace raised by them to the pitch even of 'Lanterne,' he mounts the Tribune next day; grim-resolute; murmuring aside to his friends that speak of danger: 'I know it: I must come hence either in triumph or else torn in fragments': and it was in triumph that he came.

A man stout of heart; whose popularity is not of the populace pas populacière; whom no clamour of unwashed mobs without doors, or of washed mobs within, can scare from his way! Dumont remembers hearing him deliver a Report on Marseilles; 'every word was interrupted on the part of the Côté Droit by abusive epithets; calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel (scélérat): Mirabeau pauses a moment, and, in a honeyed tone, addressing the most furious, says: "I wait. Messieurs, till these amenities be exhausted. A man enigmatic, difficult to unmask! For example, whence comes his money? Can the profit of a Newspaper, sorely eaten into by Dame Le Jay; can this, and the eighteen francs a day your National Deputy has, be supposed equal to this expenditure? House in the Chaussée d'Antin; Country-house at Argenteuil; splendours, sumptuosities, orgies;—living as if he had a mint! All saloons, barred against Adventurer Mirabeau, are flung wide-open to King Mirabeau, the cynosure of Europe, whom female France flutters to behold,—though the Man Mirabeau is one and the same. As for money, one may conjecture that Royalism furnishes it; which if Royalism do, will not the same be welcome, as money always is to him?

'Sold,' whatever Patriotism thinks, he cannot readily be: