was noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men.  He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife); the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear:  “the clatter-teeth (claque-dents)!” snarles singular old Mirabeau; discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.

But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not seen and tried!  From drill-sergeants, to prime-ministers, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen.  All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it is a social, loving heart, that wild unconquerable one:—­more especially all manner of women.  From the Archer’s Daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could not but ‘steal,’ and be beheaded for—­in effigy!  For indeed hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead to Ali’s admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength of thirty men.  In War, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons.  In Literature, he has written on Despotism, on Lettres-de-Cachet; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities; Books on the Prussian Monarchy, on Cagliostro, on Calonne, on the Water Companies of Paris:—­each book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire; huge, smoky, sudden!  The firepan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered from huckster, and ass-panniers, of every description under heaven.  Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim:  Out upon it, the fire is mine!

Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing.  The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man himself he can make his.  “All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de reverbere)!” snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not.  Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of all for him.  In that forty-years ’struggle against despotism,’ he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped.  Rare union!  This man can live self-sufficing—­yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him:  a born king of men!

But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has “made away with (hume, swallowed) all Formulas;”—­a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much.  This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights.  A man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it:  for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men.  A man not with logic-spectacles; but with an eye!  Unhappily without Decalogue,