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D'Espresménil had strongly advocated the doctrine that the meeting of the three orders in separate chambers was a fundamental principle of the monarchy; and Mirabeau, in opposition to him, moved an address to the king, which represented the Third Estate as desirous to ally itself with the throne, so as to enable it to resist the pretensions of the clergy and the nobles; and, as this speech of his produced no overture from the minister, in the middle of June he made a direct offer to Necker to support the Government, if Necker had any plan at all which was in the least reasonable; and he gave proof of his sincerity by vigorously opposing some proposals of the extreme reformers.
Mirabeau represented to his colleagues, that it was not fit to indulge in premature applause. "Let us wait," said he, "till his majesty makes known the good intentions we are led to expect from him. The blood of our brethren flows in Paris. Let a sad respect be the first reception given to the king by the representatives of an unfortunate people: the silence of the people is the lesson of kings."
Messieurs de Broglie, de Bouille, de Luxembourg, and others, were to have been commanders. But this plan, like many others, was foiled in its birth, and, it is said, through the intrigues of Mirabeau. Now arose a fresh difficulty. Transports were wanted, and in considerable numbers. A navy agent in England was applied to for the supply of these transports.
"Are there any stories connected with this prison besides the one relating to the poisoning of Mirabeau?" asked the count; "are there any traditions respecting these dismal abodes, in which it is difficult to believe men can ever have imprisoned their fellow-creatures?" "Yes, sir; indeed, the jailer Antoine told me one connected with this very dungeon."
There was nothing in the eloquence of Demosthenes in Athens, of Cicero in Rome, of Mirabeau in France, of Pitt or Gladstone in England, that surpassed the force and grandeur of the philippics of Adams against American slavery. Alone, for the greater part of his service in Congress, he stood in the midst of his malignant assailants like a rock in a stormy sea.
Galileo, whose spirit has roamed the heavens, is a prisoner of the Inquisition. Napoleon masters a continent, and expires on a rock in the ocean. Mirabeau dies of despair when he has kindled the torch of revolution. The poetic soul of Burns passes away in poverty and moral eclipse. Madness overtakes the cool satirist Swift, and mental degeneracy is the final condition of the fertile-minded Scott.
A single example must be quoted: Mirabeau, wishing to get rid of a mistress of whom he is tired, but who is still devoted to him, writes her a letter of the most studied insolence, cleverly turned, and sends a copy of it, with infinite fatuity, to his friend. Vauvenargues replies that he has read out this letter at dinner to his fellow-officers, who have been greatly diverted by its wit.
Mirabeau himself deplored its action, and Malouet had reason to expect a stouter resistance to the revolutionary argument and the sudden ascendency of Sieyès. The queen in person, and influential men at court, entreated Necker to modify his constitutional scheme; but he was unshaken, and the king stood by him.
Distance increases every reputation his was immense; it comprised and eclipsed all; Necker, Mirabeau, the Duc d'Orleans, the three most popular men in Paris, all Paled their ineffectual fires before La Fayette, whose name was the nation's for three years.
There is nothing of the madman about Danton; on the contrary, not only is his intellect sound, but he possesses political aptitudes to an eminent degree, and to such an extent that, in this particular, none of his associates or adversaries compare with him, while, among the men of the Revolution, only Mirabeau equals or surpasses him.
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