which the pursuit of truth inspires, and the passion which its discovery
gives; he was accordingly absolute in his views, disdaining those of
others, because he considered them incomplete, and because, in his
opinion, half truth was error. Contradiction irritated him; he was not
communicative. Desirous of making himself thoroughly known, he could not
do so with every one. His disciples imparted his systems to others, which
surrounded him with a sort of mystery, and rendered him the object of a
species of reverence. He had the authority which complete political
science procures, and the constitution might have emerged from his head
completely armed, like the Minerva of Jupiter, or the legislation of the
ancients, were it not that in our days every one sought to be engaged in
the task, or to criticise it. Yet, with the exception of some
modifications, his plans were generally adopted, and he had in the
committees more disciples than colleagues.

Mirabeau obtained in the tribune the same ascendancy as Sieyes in the
committees. He was a man who only waited the occasion to become great. At
Rome, in the best days of the republic, he would have been a Gracchus; in
its decline, a Catiline; under the Fronde, a cardinal de Retz; and in the
decrepitude of a monarchy, when such a being could only find scope for his
immense faculties in agitation, he became remarkable for the vehemence of
his passions, and for their punishment, a life passed in committing
excesses, and suffering for them. This prodigious activity required
employment; the revolution provided it. Accustomed to the struggle against
despotism, irritated by the contempt of a nobility who were inferior to
him, and who excluded him from their body; clever, daring, eloquent,
Mirabeau felt that the revolution would be his work, and his life. He
exactly corresponded to the chief wants of his time. His thought, his
voice, his action, were those of a tribune. In perilous circumstances, his
was the earnestness which carries away an assembly; in difficult