United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy, and burning fire of genius? It is Gabriel Honoré Riquetti de Mirabeau; man-ruling deputy of Aix! Yes, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues and vices.
Strange enough to note, one of Friedrich's last visitors was Gabriel Honore Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau. These two saw one another; twice, for half an hour each time. The last of the old Gods and the first of the modern Titans; before Pelion leapt on Ossa; and the foul Earth taking fire at last, its vile mephitic elements went up in volcanic thunder.
M. le Comte de Lafayette, who had supported the motion, left the Assembly as plain M. Motier, the great tribune Count Mirabeau became plain M. Riquetti, and M. le Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr just simple M. Lesarques.
In the crowd there was much whispered praise of 'Le grand savant. I did not understand this until I met, in the office of the Compte de Vergennes, the eloquent Senator Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau. What an impressive name! Yet I think he deserves it. He has the eye of Mars and the hair of Samson and the tongue of an angel, I am told.
"Twenty-four millions of men shout in unison: If the black, gangrened, archi-gangrened officials dare pass a bill reducing and reorganizing the army, citizens, then you build eight hundred scaffolds in the Tuileries garden and hang on them every traitor to his country that infamous Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, at the head of them and, at the same time, erect in the middle of the fountain basin a big pile of logs to roast the ministers and their tools!"
As soon as the exempt Riquetti had signified to her the order of which he was the bearer, she adopted measures with her accustomed promptitude, and, accompanied by her daughter Charlotte, who had hastened to her mother and refused to quit her, she succeeded in reaching by cross-roads the thickets of La Vendée and the solitudes of Brittany; until, approaching within a few leagues of St.-Malo, she solicited an asylum at the hands of the Marquis de Coetquen.
Victor Riquetti, son of this second Marquis de Mirabeau and father of the great, the Count de Mirabeau, was in his early manhood an indifferent soldier, but he afterward became distinguished as a writer and leader in French politics.
In the introduction to one of his essays, Carlyle has warned us against giving too much weight to genealogy: but all his biographies, from the sketch of the Riquetti kindred to his full-length Friedrich, prefaced by two volumes of ancestry, recognise, if they do not overrate, inherited influences; and similarly his fragments of autobiography abound in suggestive reference.
In 1685, one hundred and fifteen years after the purchase above mentioned, Honoré Riquetti, lineal descendant of the Marseilles merchant, obtained the title of Marquis de Mirabeau, and there was born to this marquis a son, Jean Antoine Riquetti, who achieved a worthy record as a soldier, but whose prominent place in history is due to the fact that he was the grandfather of the great Mirabeau.
The earliest of Mirabeau's ancestors of whom there is any notable record, was Jean Riquetti, a prominent merchant at Marseilles, who, in 1570, bought the château and estate of Mirabeau, near Pertuis, from the well-known Provençal family of Barras and who, a few years later, acquired the title of Esquire.
Word Of The Day