titude: for now, behold, the
Commons Deputies are at hand!

Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have
come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king?
For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have: be their
work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty,
position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet
elected king, walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks,
will it be? With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar's-head,
fit to be 'shaken' as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy
beetle-brows, and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face, there look
natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,--and burning
fire of genius; like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through
murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau, the
world-compeller; man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de
Stael, he steps proudly along, though looked at askance here, and shakes
his black chevelure, or lion's-mane; as if prophetic of great deeds.

Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire
was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his
virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man;--and
intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National
Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say with the
old Despot: "The National Assembly? I am that."

Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood: for the Riquettis, or
Arighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries ago,
and settled in Provence; where from generation to generation they have
ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred: irascible, indomitable,
sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an intensity and
activity that sometimes verged towards madness, yet did not reach
it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfilment of a mad vow, chains two
Mountains together; and the chain, with its 'iron star of five rays,' is
still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it
drifting,--which also shall be seen?

Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has
watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his Grandfather, stout
Col. d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed
by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day lie sunk together on the
Bridge at Casano; while