by
solitude, and his intellect being rendered more acute by contact with
the irons of his dungeon, where his mind lost that modesty which rarely
survives the infamy of precocious punishments.

Released from gaol, in order, by his father's command, to attempt to
form a marriage beset with difficulties with Mademoiselle De Marignan, a
rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed,
like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in
the small theatre of Aix. Cunning, seduction, courage, he used every
resource of his nature to succeed, and he succeeded; but he was hardly
married, before fresh persecutions beset him, and the stronghold of
Pontarlier gaped to enclose him. A love, which his _Lettres a Sophie_
has rendered immortal, opened its gates and freed him. He carried off
Madame de Monier from her aged husband. The lovers, happy for some
months, took refuge in Holland; they were seized there, separated and
shut up, the one in a convent and the other in the dungeon of Vincennes.
Love, which, like fire in the veins of the earth, is always detected in
some crevice of man's destiny, lighted up in a single and ardent blaze
all Mirabeau's passions. In his vengeance it was outraged love that he
appeased; in liberty, it was love which he sought and which delivered
him; in study, it was love which still illustrated his path. Entering
obscure into his cell, he quitted it a writer, orator, statesman, but
perverted--ripe for any thing, even to sell himself, in order to buy
fortune and celebrity. The drama of life was conceived in his head, he
wanted but the stage, and that time was preparing for him. During the
few short years which elapsed for him between his leaving the keep of
Vincennes and the tribune of the National Assembly, he employed himself
with polemic labours, which would have weighed down another man, but
which only kept him in health. The Bank of Saint Charles, the
Institutions of Holland, the books on Prussia, the skirmish with
Beaumarchais, his style and character, his lengthened pleadings on
questions of warfare, the balance of European power, finance, those
biting invectives, that war of words with the ministers or men of the
hour, resembled the Roman forum in the days of Clodius and Cicero. We
discern the men of antiquity in even his most modern controversies. We
may fancy that we hear the first roarings of those popular tumults which
were so soon to burst forth, and