Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of weight and influence threading the great vortex of French Locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides of France towards the Chateau of Versailles:  summoned thither de par le roi.  There, on the 22d day of February 1787, they have met, and got installed:  Notables to the number of a Hundred and Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name:  (Lacretelle, iii. 286.  Montgaillard, i. 347.) add Seven Princes of the Blood, it makes the round Gross of Notables.  Men of the sword, men of the robe; Peers, dignified Clergy, Parlementary Presidents:  divided into Seven Boards (Bureaux); under our Seven Princes of the Blood, Monsieur, D’Artois, Penthievre, and the rest; among whom let not our new Duke d’Orleans (for, since 1785, he is Chartres no longer) be forgotten.  Never yet made Admiral, and now turning the corner of his fortieth year, with spoiled blood and prospects; half-weary of a world which is more than half-weary of him, Monseigneur’s future is most questionable.  Not in illumination and insight, not even in conflagration; but, as was said, ‘in dull smoke and ashes of outburnt sensualities,’ does he live and digest.  Sumptuosity and sordidness; revenge, life-weariness, ambition, darkness, putrescence; and, say, in sterling money, three hundred thousand a year,—­were this poor Prince once to burst loose from his Court-moorings, to what regions, with what phenomena, might he not sail and drift!  Happily as yet he ‘affects to hunt daily;’ sits there, since he must sit, presiding that Bureau of his, with dull moon-visage, dull glassy eyes, as if it were a mere tedium to him.

We observe finally, that Count Mirabeau has actually arrived.  He descends from Berlin, on the scene of action; glares into it with flashing sun-glance; discerns that it will do nothing for him.  He had hoped these Notables might need a Secretary.  They do need one; but have fixed on Dupont de Nemours; a man of smaller fame, but then of better;—­who indeed, as his friends often hear, labours under this complaint, surely not a universal one, of having ’five kings to correspond with.’ (Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (Paris, 1832), p. 20.) The pen of a Mirabeau cannot become an official one; nevertheless it remains a pen.  In defect of Secretaryship, he sets to denouncing Stock-brokerage (Denonciation de l’Agiotage); testifying, as his wont is, by loud bruit, that he is present and busy;—­till, warned by friend Talleyrand, and even by Calonne himself underhand, that ’a seventeenth Lettre-de-Cachet may be launched against him,’ he timefully flits over the marches.