adian tranquillity of 1789, the others were
not to blame if they treated the argument with contempt.

The failure of the conference was followed by an event which confirmed
Necker in the belief that he was not waiting in vain. He received
overtures from Mirabeau. Until that time Mirabeau had been notorious
for the obtrusive scandal of his life, and the books he had written
under pressure of need did not restore his good name. People avoided
him, not because he was brutal and vicious like other men of his rank,
but because he was reputed a liar and a thief. During one of his
imprisonments he had obtained from Dupont de Nemours communication of
an important memoir embodying Turgot's ideas on local government. He
copied the manuscript, presented it to the minister as his own work,
and sold another copy to the booksellers as the work of Turgot.
Afterwards he offered to suppress his letters from Prussia if the
Government would buy them at the price he could obtain by publishing
them. Montmorin paid what he asked for, on condition that he renounced
his candidature in Provence. Mirabeau agreed, spent the money on his
canvass, and made more by printing what he had sold to the king.
During the contest, by his coolness, audacity, and resource, he soon
acquired ascendency. The nobles who rejected him were made to feel his
power. When tumults broke out, he appeased them by his presence, and
he moved from Marseilles to Aix escorted by a retinue of 200
carriages. Elected in both places by the Third Estate, he came to
Versailles hoping to repair his fortune. There it was soon apparent
that he possessed powers of mind equal to the baseness of his conduct.
He is described by Malouet as the only man who perceived from the
first where the Revolution was tending; and his enemy Mounier avows
that he never met a more intelligent politician. He was always ready
to speak, and always vigorous and adroit. His renowned orations were
often borrowed, for he surrounded himself with able men, mostly
Genevese, versed in civil strife, who supplied him with facts,
mediated with the public, and helped him in the press. Rivarol said
that his head was a gigantic sponge, swelled out with other men's
ideas. As extempore speaking was a new art, and the ablest men read
their speeches, Mirabeau was at once an effective debater--probably
the best debater, though not the most perfect orator, that has
appeared in the splendid record of parliamentary life in France