BOOKS.
THE MIRABEAU FAMILY.*
[SECOND NOTICE.]
THE Marquis de Mirabeau was distinguished from his terse, simple, and undemonstrative brother by excessive impetuosity,
• Les Mtrabeaux. Par Lode de Lomenia, de Pdoaddmie Francais°. 2 yob. ?aria: E. Denta. 1879.
torrential volubility, and an incorrigible readiness rashly to plunge into engagements singularly imprudent, and often rest- ing on wildly chimerical assumptions. Southern temperament, fantastic hastiness of mind, and a constitutional vehemence that continually overleapt itself, contributed to render the Marquis's life an unbroken series of untoward adventures, and of conflicts both irritating and galling. From these his own reputation has been the greatest sufferer, for the effect of his rash and vehement doings has resulted in much mis- representation, which the artful skill of unprincipled enemies—notably, his celebrated son—has succeeded in ren- dering credible. The Marquis was not always a pattern of what was becoming in the father of a family ; but he certainly did not bear himself in his domestic relations as the tyrant the public was asked to believe him to have been, in the scandalous libels profusely scattered about by the venomous pen of his brilliant but thoroughly profligate son. The early years of the Marquis were passed in the military service, and there is ample evidence that he sowed his wild-oats pretty freely in the pleasure-haunts of the metropolis. Yet already at this period he showed a feeling for what was elevated in the close intimacy contracted with the refined and moral- ising Vauvenargues, who in a letter thus describes his friend's character :—" You, my dear Mirabeau, are ardent, bilious, more agitated, more overbearing, and more uneven than the seas, and supremely greedy of the pleasures of knowledge and of honours." It is a surprise to learn how to the Marquis's influence it is due that Vauvenargaes ever engaged in literature. The mutual action on each other of these two very different natures is sin- gular. What Mirabeau was at this time can be gathered from the following passages in letters :—" My dear Vauvenargues, love me ; you are one whose love will prove the sweetness of my life ; for women, who now are the whole occupation of my mad youth, will hold, I trust, not the smallest corner, at a certain age." And again, "Ambition devours me, but in a strange shape. It is not honours I desire, nor money, nor its advantages; but a name, and in a word, to be somebody." A mettlesome, im- petuous, fiery individual, with animal passions very far from sluggish, but also with a mind quick to fly after nobler objects than mere sensual enjoyments, his action in life being, how- ever, perpetually misdirected, through a radical incapacity for careful method,—such was the father of Mirabeau. His want of business-like regularity was conspicuously shown in his money arrangements. The Marquis prided himself on his administrative talents, while, in reality, he embarked eagerly in illusory enterprises. His confidence induced him to make pur- chases that proved ruinous, simply because he had taken assur- ances on trust ; and, which is eminently characteristic of the man, he never could be persuaded that the embarrassments he got involved in were the inevitable consequences of his own want of prudence. At the same time, the Marquis was quite pedantic about the voluminous records register- ing his financial enterprises, as if the expenditure of pen- work would forcibly turn a deficit into a surplus. Having inherited an encumbered property, which left him with an in- come of but 16,000 livres, at the outside, the Marquis, to better himself, acquired first a mansion in Paris, and then several estates which he fancied were capable of profitable improve- ment. Of these purchases, one, constituting, as he himself describes it, with self-complacency, in the big record of his financial proceedings, "the most important epoch in all my administration, present and future," was also a transaction which was simply ludicrous, from its inconceivable rashness. The Rohans owned in Brittany a domain with a historical name and extensive feudal rights. This estate was for sale, and the Marquis, attracted by the statement of the Bohan agent, who manifestly understood how to bait the hook, engaged to become the purchaser, on data taken by him on trust, and which were found to have been grossly illusory. Of course, the purchase- money had to be borrowed, and the family lawyer's perplexity at the bargain is sufficiently apparent from the Marquis's own words :—" On leaving the agent, I went to Girard, my notary, to whom I recounted my stroke of good-luck. He listened with staring eyes and gaping mouth, as I asked him to procure me the money." The Marquis, however, was not a man to be list- less, and it was certainly from no want of activity on his part that the new acquisition failed to prove remunerative. Here it is that the author has had the opportunity of giving a telling picture of what came within the province of seignorial rights and dues under the Anciea Regime, for to this Bohan fief a vast number
of these rights were attached, and the Marquis saw himself quickly engaged in countless litigations, with the view of esta- blishing his title to their money equivalents. Amelioration, however, entered largely into his schemes—amelioration, in most instances, as fantastic and unreal as had been the basis for the bargain itself—but in which is plainly discernible the speculative spirit of theory so conspicuous in the writings of the 21mi des Hommel?. This impulsive disposition to take matters on trust was greatly shown in the manner in which he engaged himself in marriage. Feeling a call to take a wife, chance brought the Marquis across a certain M. de Vassa.n, who was reputed to be a man of means, and was known to have a daughter, then away in the Provinces with her mother, who was separated from her husband. A match with the lady was suggested by an acquaintance. The idea pleased the Marquis, and at once was submitted to the father, who, "according to his wont, chattered a vast deal, and expressed himself much in favour of the transaction." Then came a. statement of the lady's fortune, by no means clear, but appar- ently not unsatisfactory, if secured by guarantees. Here the Marquis's rashness, however, intervened, to his grievous detri- ment. He accepted glib assurances as sterling money, and with characteristic vehemence signed an off-hand engagement binding on himself, after which he rushed into the Limousin, to make the acquaintance of his bride and her mother. Thus lightly was tied the knot which proved a fatal noose to. his happiness. A more ill-assorted match cannot be conceived. "His wife is one of the most ridiculous creatures in the world," was the Due de Duras's opinion. "Three days after I had seen thy wife, I understood how unfit she was to appear on any stage," wrote the Bailli. On another occasion, he said, "Thou hast allied thyself to a female who, without any one charm of her sex, has all its vices, as well as those of ours."
The facts of the conjugal quarrel between the Marquis and his wife have been grossly misrepresented in notorious pam- phlets, many of them written by his son. It is untrue that husband and wife fell out from the first,—it is equally untrue that the former provoked rupture by his harshness. The Marquis was not immaculate, but by the side of his spouse he is a model of dignity, and the charge of his having shown hint.. self actuated by a greed for money in his dealings is absolutely false. The Marquis throughout conducted himself in reference to pecuniary interests with a delicate sense of honour. The rupture ensued in 1762, after twenty years' wedlock, and the birth of ten children. Some papers came to hand which made the husband peremptorily insist on separation. These have not been preserved, but their tenour appears to have stamped the wife with almost incredible shamelessness. The engagement was taken that she should receive an annuity (which was paid regularly), and reside at Limoges. It cannot be denied that at this time already the Marquis had con- tracted an intimacy with Madame de Pailly. The evidence in these volumes, however, tends to show that though faulty, this lady, in her moral conduct, was yet a person of refined culture, whose influence on the much tormented Marquis during his domestic feuds was never exercised in a sense to widen the breach. Even the younger Mirabeau, who reviled her in print as a courtesan, wrote to her privately in a tone wholly out of keeping with his public imputations ; while numerous letters prove the high appreciation in which Madame de Pailly's quali- ties were held by persons of great distinction. The contrast was, indeed, great between the charms of this handsome and accomplished lady, and the brazen coarseness of the Mar- quise. Never was there a head of a family fallen upon by so sorry a rabble of rebellions and unprincipled mem- bers as this poor Marquis de Mirabeau. Every incident that can intensify the painfulness of family altercation is to be found in this disgraceful disunion. After thirteen years of separa- tion, one morning at seven o'clock the Marquis saw his house un- expectedly invaded by his spouse, accompanied by myrmidons of the law, to demand restitution of conjugal rights. At this time she was actively assisted by her daughter, Madame de Cabris, a worthy representative of Mirabeau irregularities,—a handsome, depraved, good-for-nothing woman,—who had not the slightest regard for propriety. Her equally profligate brother, on falling out with this precious sister, actually designated her "a prosti- tute." At this time, young Mirabean had long been at daggers drawn with his mother ; but, in consequence of his pecuniary recklessness, he also happened to be not at all at one with his father. This circumstance induced the scapegrace to draw near to his mother, as an useful ally, in common operations, against the Marquis, and accordingly an intimate coalition was esta- blished between this shameless trio. It was Madame de Cabris who, with the co-operation of her lover, facilitated the escape of her brother from Dijon, then already married, and his elopement with Madame de Monnier into Holland. It was also through the action of the mother and the daughter that the infamous libels were surreptitiously brought into France, in which the son did not scruple to vilify his father with monstrous calumnies. It was then only that the Marquis, goaded into passion, was led into unwise pro- ceedings, which gave a colour to the allegations of his artful enemies. Instead of confounding them in the Law Courts, in- stead of overwhelming them with public contempt by the ex posure of documentary evidence, the Marquis set at work the arbitrary agency of the lettres de cachet, and sought to free himself from his unnatural persecution by summary arrest. Though this brought him temporary relief, the indefatigable action of the wife in bringing suits in the Law Courts really ensured her triumph in the end. The Marquis was -worsted, as regards the technical points raised with per- tinacity and skill in the course of litigation, and the days of the old man ended in bitterness. Still the strange course of this Mirabeau conflict was furthermore diversified by a fresh incident. Before the closing scene of the drama, father and son not only again became temporarily reconciled, but the latter employed his pen in writing against his mother memoirs as pungent as were those before composed by him in Holland, in support of her action against his father. The details of this tissue of ignoble proceedings—of reckless, unprincipled, immoral beings pursuing their own immediate advantage and ends, with a glaringly cynical disavowal of all pretence to higher principles than self-interest—must be seen in M. de Lomenie's volumes. The picture is an outrageous one, and but for the importance of the facts in illustration of a man who played a conspicuous part in a capital event of the world's history, would deserve to be relegated to the library-shelf on which stand the more revolting productions of French novel-writing. It is the merit of M. de Lomenie that lie has treated his unsavoury material with delicacy. His work is historical, and he has maintained the befitting tone. We look forward, therefore, with much curiosity to the promised volumes, in which he will portray in full the towering figure of the tribune, whose juvenile and discreditable troubles are here but shadowed out, in so far as they were brought into connection with the quarrels between his father and mother.
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