despotism; to make away with her old
formulas,--having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She
will make away with such formulas;--and even go bare, if need be, till
she have found new ones.

Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti
Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the
slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could
not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke.
And now it has got air; it will burn its whole substance, its whole
smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty
years of that smouldering, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough, then
victory over that;--and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high;
and, for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten
fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of an
amazed Europe;--and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou
questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest of them all: in the whole
National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none
second to thee.

But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be the
meanest? Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man,
under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled,
careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time;
complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which
may be the pale sea-green. (See De Stael, Considerations (ii. 142);
Barbaroux, Memoires, &c.) That greenish-coloured (verdatre) individual
is an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre. The son of
an Advocate; his father founded mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the
English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftily
educated; he had brisk Camille Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College
of Louis le Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal,
Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favour of a
younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed; home to paternal Arras;
and even had a Law-case there and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, 'in
favour of the first Franklin thunder-rod.' With a strict painful mind,
an understanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favour with
official persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of business,
happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking co