and that was
being prepared for him by time. During the few short years which
elapsed between his leaving the keep of Vincennes and the tribune of
the National Assembly, he employed himself with polemic labors which
would have weighed down another man, but which only kept Mirabeau in
health. Such topics as the bank of Saint Charles, the institutions of
Holland, the books on Prussia, with Beaumarchais (his style and
character), with lengthened pleadings on questions of warfare, the
balance of European power, finance, leading to biting invectives and
wars of words with the ministers of the hour, made scenes that
resembled those in the Roman forum of the days of Clodius and Cicero.
We discern the men of antiquity even in his most modern controversies.
We may hear the first roarings or popular tumults which were so soon
to burst forth, and which his voice was destined to control.

At the first election of Aix, when rejected with contempt by the
noblesse, he cast himself into the arms of the people, certain of
making the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the
weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for
the great plebeian; his two elections, the discourses he then
delivered, the addresses he drew up, the energy he employed commanded
the attention of all France. His sonorous phrases became the proverbs
of the Revolution. Comparing himself, in his lofty language, to the
men of antiquity, he placed himself already in the public estimation
in the elevated position he aspired to reach. Men became accustomed to
identify him with the names he cited; he made a loud noise in order to
prepare minds for great commotions; he announced himself proudly to
the nation, in that sublime apostrophe in his address to the
Marseillais: "When the last of the Gracchi expired, he flung dust
toward heaven, and from this dust sprang Marius!--Marius, who was less
great for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having prostrated
in Rome the aristocracy of the nobility."

From the moment of his entry into the National Assembly Mirabeau
filled it: he became the whole people. His gestures were commands; his
movements _coups d'etat_. He placed himself on a level with the
throne, and the nobility itself felt itself subdued by a power
emanating from its own body. The clergy, and the people, with their
desires to reconcile democracy with the church, lent him their
influence, in order to destroy the double aristocr