Word: vallentine
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Dates: during 1948-1948
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MIRABEAU (542 pp.)-Antonina Vallentin-Viking...
...lives in this book as a powerful, eloquent, ugly, passionate, courageous spokesman of the Revolution in the days before the Terror. The great moment that made him historic is scarcely more than an episode. His life was full of them. Author Antonina Vallentin (Leonardo da Vinci) has written a long, detailed work, half a psychological study, half an account of the Revolution, drawn with rough and scratchy pen strokes, all laid against a dark and ominous background that recalls Goya's grim drawings...
...rare friendly moments, his father nicknamed him "Mr. Hurricane." The simple outline of Mirabeau's doings becomes a kind of epic of frustration whose misery Madame Vallentin, engrossed in her psychological analyses, does not seem to appreciate. He was ugly, and so he was the butt of the brilliant nobility, and a burden to his father who was at first ashamed of him and then, as Mirabeau developed as a writer, jealous...
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...