Word: mirabeau
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...opinion of his taste and judgment." In France, Rush saw Louis XV, who "had a good eye, and an intelligent countenance, and hence he was said to be "the most sensible looking fool in Europe.' " The great Encyclopedist, Diderot, entertained Rush in his library, and the Marquis of Mirabeau invited him to a "coterie" at his home...
...dragoons, but was forever in & out of prison because of his gambling debts, or because he was pursued by his revengeful father. He seduced an heiress, and contrived to be discovered with her, so as to marry her. They lived in a gloomy old castle infested with bugs. Mirabeau bankrupted himself trying to bring it up to the standard of luxury his wife had always known. Cuckolded, he forgave his wife. Meanwhile his sister had quarreled with her husband, who took to printing obscene verses about her, and Mirabeau took her part...
Imprisoned again with 30 others in the Chateau d'lf, he seduced the canteen attendant, was moved to another prison, finally fled over the frontier (leaving still another mistress behind him). His sister and her lover, accompanied by a girl engaged to be married, joined him in Switzerland. Mirabeau seduced the other girl. A queer conflict developed with his sister -he wrote to his mistress of her in detail that admitted of incestuous relations; the letter fell into the hands of her father; she became the most rabid of all the enemies who pursued...
Secret Adviser. Such was the background and preparation of the man who, in a crisis, was called upon to save France. He nearly did it. Author Vallentin makes it very plain that in the last moments before the Terror there was nobody in the Assembly except Mirabeau who had the confidence of the people. He became a secret adviser of the king. It was then too late; Mirabeau's strength was gone, and his advice was not followed, or was accepted only in part. The queen, with "her superficial and malicious intelligence, which excelled in seizing on slight slips...
...Mirabeau is strong, not altogether pleasant, reading. Mirabeau's true greatness emerges in his courage and vitality, and in the tenacity with which he held to his ideal of justice through the terrific injustices of his own life and age. Despite the memorable phrases of the Rights of Man, and his orations, readers will be most moved by his little forlorn admissions of the sickness of the age in which he lived, a sickness he recognized dimly that he shared. He seems not to have been driven by a clear vision of a better order; he had simply, like...