imself during this
campaign, that he was not only promoted to a captaincy in the dragoons,
but he effected a partial reconciliation with his father, returned to
Provence, was permitted to assume his true name and title, and was
presented at court. In June, 1772, he married, by his father's advice,
Marie Emile de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane. She
came to him portionless, and he, impetuous, ambitious, and extravagant,
became, during the next two years, deeply involved in debt. The marriage
was a failure. Again the father utilized the _lettre de cachet_, and a
second time was Mirabeau a prisoner (August 23, 1774), this time in the
Chateau d'If, at Marseilles. Here it was that he wrote his first work of
which we have any exact knowledge, its title being: "Essai sur le
Despotisme."

In the following year he was transferred from the Chateau d'If to the
Castle of Joux, where he was less strictly confined. He had the freedom
of the place and frequent opportunities for visiting the near-by town of
Pontarlier. It was in this town that he first met Marie Therese, the
Marchioness de Monnier, the young and attractive wife of an aged
magistrate. A love affair was the result, and it culminated in August,
1776, in an elopement, first to Switzerland and then to Amsterdam. For
over nine months the fugitive pair lived together in the Dutch capital,
Mirabeau, under the assumed name of St. Mathieu, earning a livelihood as
a pamphleteer and by making translations for Holland publishers.
Meanwhile the tribunal of Pontarlier had condemned both
parties--Mirabeau to be beheaded and his companion (his "Sophie," as she
is most widely known) to imprisonment for life. On May 14, 1777, they
were arrested at Amsterdam, and Mirabeau was imprisoned by a _lettre de
cachet_ in the Castle of Vincennes, while Sophie was surrendered to the
Pontarlier authorities.

For three and a half years thereafter Mirabeau was in confinement, a
term which proved sufficient to temper his passion, and during which he
wrote his well-known "Letters to Sophie," the "Erotica Biblion," and "My
Conversion." He also wrote, during this time, his first worthy political
production, the "Lettres de Cachet." He was released from this
imprisonment on December 13, 1780, and at once sought out Sophie, to
quarrel with and leave her, and so, fortunately, end the most
disgraceful portion of his life.

Mirabeau, now thirty-one years old, and, according to the times, mo