Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped
over him,--only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that
loved head; and Vendome, dropping his spyglass, moaned out, 'Mirabeau
is dead, then!' Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breathe, and
miraculous surgery;--for Gabriel was yet to be. With his silver stock
he kept his scarred head erect, through long years; and wedded; and
produced tough Marquis Victor, the Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the
appointed year 1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honore did
likewise see the light: roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that
rough breed. How the old lion (for our old Marquis too was lion-like,
most unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wonderingly on
his offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It
is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will
not learn to draw in dogcart of Political Economy, and be a Friend of
Men; he will not be Thou, must and will be Himself, another than Thou.
Divorce lawsuits, 'whole family save one in prison, and three-score
Lettres-de-Cachet' for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.

Our Luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle
of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle of If, and
heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of
Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the
Dungeon of Vincennes;--all by Lettre-de-Cachet, from his lion father.
He has been in Pontarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed
fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of
men. He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife);
the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear: "the
clatter-teeth (claque-dents)!" snarles singular old Mirabeau; discerning
in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones,
and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.

But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not
seen and tried! From drill-sergeants, to prime-ministers, to foreign and
domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men
he has gained; for at bottom it is a social, loving heart, that wild
unconquerable one:--more especially all manner of women. From the
Archer's Daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier,
whom he could not but 'steal,' and be