Chapter 2: 3.vi

Mirabeau.

The spirit of France waxes ever more acrid, fever-sick: towards
the final outburst of dissolution and delirium. Suspicion rules
all minds: contending parties cannot now commingle; stand
separated sheer asunder, eying one another, in most aguish mood,
of cold terror or hot rage. Counter-Revolution, Days of Poniards,
Castries Duels; Flight of Mesdames, of Monsieur and Royalty!
Journalism shrills ever louder its cry of alarm. The sleepless
Dionysius’s Ear of the Forty-eight Sections, how feverishly quick
has it grown; convulsing with strange pangs the whole sick Body,
as in such sleeplessness and sickness, the ear will do!

Since Royalists get Poniards made to order, and a Sieur Motier is
no better than he should be, shall not Patriotism too, even of
the indigent sort, have Pikes, secondhand Firelocks, in readiness
for the worst? The anvils ring, during this March month, with
hammering of Pikes. A Constitutional Municipality promulgated its
Placard, that no citizen except the “active or cash-citizen” was
entitled to have arms; but there rose, instantly responsive, such
a tempest of astonishment from Club and Section, that the
Constitutional Placard, almost next morning, had to cover itself
up, and die away into inanity, in a second improved edition.[352]
So the hammering continues; as all that it betokens does.

Mark, again, how the extreme tip of the Left is mounting in
favour, if not in its own National Hall, yet with the Nation,
especially with Paris. For in such universal panic of doubt, the
opinion that is sure of itself, as the meagrest opinion may the
soonest be, is the one to which all men will rally. Great is
Belief, were it never so meagre; and leads captive the doubting
heart! Incorruptible Robespierre has been elected Public Accuser
in our new Courts of Judicature; virtuous Pétion, it is thought,
may rise to be Mayor. Cordelier Danton, called also by triumphant
majorities, sits at the Departmental Council-table; colleague
there of Mirabeau. Of incorruptible Robespierre it was long ago
predicted that he might go far, mean meagre mortal though he was;
for Doubt dwelt not in him.

Under which circumstances ought not Royalty likewise to cease
doubting, and begin deciding and acting? Royalty has always that
sure trump-card in its hand: Flight out of Paris. Which sure
trump-card, Royalty, as we see, keeps ever and anon clutching at,
grasping; and swashes it forth tentatively; yet never tables it,
still puts it back again. Play it, O Royalty! If there be a
chance left, this seems it, and verily the last chance; and now
every hour is rendering this a doubtfuller. Alas, one would so
fain both fly and not fly; play one’s card and have it to play.
Royalty, in all human likelihood, will not play its trump-card
till the honours, one after one, be mainly lost; and such
trumping of it prove to be the sudden finish of the game!

Here accordingly a question always arises; of the prophetic sort;
which cannot now be answered. Suppose Mirabeau, with whom Royalty
takes deep counsel, as with a Prime Minister that cannot yet
legally avow himself as such, had got his arrangements
_completed?_ Arrangements he has; far-stretching plans that dawn
fitfully on us, by fragments, in the confused darkness. Thirty
Departments ready to sign loyal Addresses, of prescribed tenor:
King carried out of Paris, but only to Compiègne and Rouen,
hardly to Metz, since, once for all, no Emigrant rabble shall
take the lead in it: National Assembly consenting, by dint of
loyal Addresses, by management, by force of Bouillé, to hear
reason, and follow thither![353] Was it so, on _these_ terms,
that Jacobinism and Mirabeau were then to grapple, in their
Hercules-and-Typhon duel; death inevitable for the one or the
other? The duel itself is determined on, and sure: but on what
terms; much more, with what issue, we in vain guess. It is vague
darkness all: unknown what is to be; unknown even what has
already been. The giant Mirabeau walks in darkness, as we said;
companionless, on wild ways: what his thoughts during these
months were, no record of Biographer, not vague _Fils Adoptif_,
will now ever disclose.

To us, endeavouring to cast his horoscope, it of course remains
doubly vague. There is one Herculean man, in internecine duel
with him, there is Monster after Monster. Emigrant Noblesse
return, sword on thigh, vaunting of their Loyalty never sullied;
descending from the air, like Harpy-swarms with ferocity, with
obscene greed. Earthward there is the Typhon of Anarchy,
Political, Religious; sprawling hundred-headed, say with
Twenty-five million heads; wide as the area of France; fierce as
Frenzy; strong in very Hunger. With these shall the
Serpent-queller do battle continually, and expect no rest.

As for the King, he as usual will go wavering chameleonlike;
changing colour and purpose with the colour of his
environment;—good for no Kingly use. On one royal person, on the
Queen only, can Mirabeau perhaps place dependance. It is
possible, the greatness of this man, not unskilled too in
blandishments, courtiership, and graceful adroitness, might, with
most legitimate sorcery, fascinate the volatile Queen, and fix
her to him. She has courage for all noble daring; an eye and a
heart: the soul of Theresa’s Daughter. “_Faut il-donc_, Is it
fated then,” she passionately writes to her Brother, “that I with
the blood I am come of, with the sentiments I have, must live and
die among such mortals?”[354] Alas, poor Princess, Yes. “She is
the only _man_,” as Mirabeau observes, “whom his Majesty has
about him.” Of one other man Mirabeau is still surer: of himself.
There lies his resources; sufficient or insufficient.

Dim and great to the eye of Prophecy looks the future! A
perpetual life-and-death battle; confusion from above and from
below;—mere confused darkness for us; with here and there some
streak of faint lurid light. We see King perhaps laid aside; not
tonsured, tonsuring is out of fashion now; but say, sent away any
whither, with handsome annual allowance, and stock of
smith-tools. We see a Queen and Dauphin, Regent and Minor; a
Queen “mounted on horseback,” in the din of battles, with
_Moriamur pro rege nostro!_ “Such a day,” Mirabeau writes, “may
come.”

Din of battles, wars more than civil, confusion from above and
from below: in such environment the eye of Prophecy sees Comte de
Mirabeau, like some Cardinal de Retz, stormfully maintain
himself; with head all-devising, heart all-daring, if not
victorious, yet unvanquished, while life is left him. The
specialties and issues of it, no eye of Prophecy can guess at: it
is clouds, we repeat, and tempestuous night; and in the middle of
it, now visible, far darting, now labouring in eclipse, is
Mirabeau indomitably struggling to be Cloud-Compeller!—One can
say that, had Mirabeau lived, the History of France and of the
World had been different. Further, that the man would have
needed, as few men ever did, the whole compass of that same “Art
of Daring, _Art d’Oser_,” which he so prized; and likewise that
he, above all men then living, would have practised and
manifested it. Finally, that some substantiality, and no empty
simulacrum of a formula, would have been the result realised by
him: a result you could have loved, a result you could have
hated; by no likelihood, a result you could only have rejected
with closed lips, and swept into quick forgetfulness for ever.
Had Mirabeau lived one other year!