Luther, holding a rose in his hand, said, “’Tis a magnificent work of God.  Could a man make but one such rose as this he would be thought worthy of all honour, but the manifold gifts of God lose their value in our eyes from their very infinity.”

* * * * *

MIRABEAU

Memoirs

Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2, 1791.  His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical representative of the French aristocracy, and Honore, a younger son, inherited something of his violent temperament, but was endowed with real genius.  Entering the army, young Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with the young wife of an aged nobleman.  He fled to Holland, but was captured and imprisoned.  Being at length liberated, he turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity in both.  His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly to the front in the period immediately anterior to the outbreak of the Revolution.  Mirabeau’s “Memoirs, by Himself, his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son,” published in eight volumes in 1834, contain no original writings by Mirabeau himself, except in the shape of extracts from his speeches, letters, and pamphlets.  The following epitome has been prepared from the French text.

I.—­“The Hurricane"

The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honore Gabriel, the subject of these memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by the best education.  He had, however, become independent at too early an age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.

Honore Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of Mirabeau, was the fifth child of the marquis.  Destined to be the most turbulent and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and his tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were extraordinary, and already two molars were formed in his jaw.  At the age of three the boy nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus disfigured greatly for life; while the other children were, like the parents, gifted with wonderful beauty.

Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent education.  At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and tutor was continual.  His inquisitiveness was irrepressible.  He relates that at the family supper after his confirmation, “they explained to me that God could not make contradictions—­for instance, a stick with only one end.  I asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a miracle.  My grandmother never forgave me.”

Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abbe Choquart in a military school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.