The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-04-05

elected, greatly to the JOY of the populace.
thus at the states general was this extraor-
binary character pitted against the aris-
tocracy and the king. Already in the pro-
cession he was pointed out as the coming
leader. The snarling old father had said of
him that he was nothing but reflex and
echo, composed of two Gathering jawbones
and vacant head. Here, however, we find
1t greatly different. From the first day he
was leader OF the grsat assembly He only
had In him the daring and the native king
ship necessary to overawe and command
| such body of men. AS he took his seat
on the front bench reserved for the Third Es-
tate he glanced at the king, who sat in his
crown jewels under the canopy at the other
end of the hall, and said to those about
him, Behold the victim already adornedp'
In the gallery on the opposite side above,
next to the wife of Montmorin, the minis
ter of foreign affairs, sat Germaine Necker
afterward known to the world as Nine. de
Stael. She caught glance of Mirabeau,
pointed him out to the minister's wife. and
almost shouted with delight at the sight of
such fierce visaged tiger among the Com
mons. Nine. Nontmorin responded, 'You
must not rejoice, for not only France shall
suffer for this but we ourselves" Pro-
phet1c words they were, too, for Mime. de
Montmorin fell with one of her sons under
the guillotine. Another son was drowned.
Her husband was killed in the September
massacre. Her eldest daughter died in
Jail, and the youngest of broken hearth
As for Nine de Stael, she shall indeed re-
Ioice for season; but after that? Twenty
years of exileI
On the 3lst Of last January it was q
hundred years since Mirabeau became
president of the national assembly AL
ready he had become the king of men
like Agamemnon. Already France was in
the throes of that mighty revolution by
which all things have been transformed
and made anew. Already from the crater
OF the volcano vast masses of cinders and
lava were pouring forth floods of molten
5ltumen, clouds of sulphurous smoke and
all the scoria of the Middle Ages. In the
midst of the universal confusion and down
rushing of things it had become strangely
apparent that Mirabeau was the one man
who might still control the tempest.
BY his birth and antecedents he was al
lied with the aristocracy. At the begin
ming he was very far from being a radical
revoluSonist as it respected the monarchy.
Perhaps to the day of his death he was
not convinced that the monarchy must 90.
or that even the king must 90. His atti-
tude of hostility and implacable battle |
with the ruling powers of France had been |
the result of the disparagement to which |
he had been subjected by his own order,
the nobility. But meanwhile broader dem
ocratic principles had taken possession of
his mind. He had become profoundly
pathetic with the Third Estate, and was
ready to declare with the most pronounced
radical that the French nation CONSISTED
of the Third Estate without the nobility |
or the clergy"
In this complexity of forces, putting |
back one party with one hand and the |
other with the other, he went forward like |
samson, pulling up the very gate posts of |
power and becoming the autocrat of the |
assembly and the people of France. The |
court trembied before him. The clergy |
were obsequious. Marie Antoinette. from |
hating and deriding him, had sought an
and was considering the ques-
ton OF making him minister of state. The |
commons looked to him with confidence
and applause. His name echoed around |
Europe. When titles were abolished he |
BULL WOulu reGdlu UtS. lie would be called
Mirabeau and not the Citizen Riauetti.
In the assembly he said one day with in
finite sarcasm. "You have now for three
days set all Europe at cross purposes with
your RiQuettil"
This tremendous ascendancy over France
and the revolution itself Mirabeau re-
tanned to the day of his death. 1t came to
be believed that the cloud compelling Titan
could really outride the storm, and when
it was known that the storm within him
was about to prevail, that the terrible
surge and swell of his volcanic spirit were
about to break in death, feeling of uni
versal alarm pervaded all circles of society,
His prodigious activities and burning pas
sions had at length conspired to do what
opposition and enmity, the hatred Of man
and even the disgust of nature, had been
unable to accomplish. He continued in the
presidency of the assembly for two months,
but in the last days of March, 1791, it be-
came evident that the end was at hand.