All that had been built by antiquity and cemented by ages fell in a few months.  Mirabeau alone preserved his presence of mind in the midst of this ruin.  His character of tribune ceases, that of the statesman begins, and in this he is even greater than in the other.  There, when all else creep and crawl, he acts with firmness, advancing boldly.  The Revolution in his brain is no longer a momentary idea—­it is a settled plan.  The philosophy of the eighteenth century, moderated by the prudence of policy, flows easily, and modelled from his lips.  His eloquence, imperative as the law, is now the talent of giving force to reason.  His language lights and inspires every thing; and though almost alone at this moment, he has the courage to remain alone.  He braves envy, hatred, murmurs, supported by the strong feeling of his superiority.  He dismisses with disdain the passions which have hitherto beset him.  He will no longer serve them when his cause no longer needs them.  He speaks to men now only in the name of his genius.  This title is enough to cause obedience to him.  His power is based on the assent which truth finds in all minds, and his strength again reverts to him.  He contests with all parties, and rises superior to one and all.  All hate him because he commands; and all seek him because he can serve or destroy them.  He does not give himself up to any one, but negotiates with each:  he lays down calmly on the tumultuous element of this assembly, the basis of the reformed constitution:  legislation, finance, diplomacy, war, religion, political economy, balances of power, every question he approaches and solves, not as an Utopian, but as a politician.  The solution he gives is always the precise mean between the theoretical and the practical.  He places reason on a level with manners, and the institutions of the land in consonance with its habits.  He desires a throne to support the democracy, liberty in the chambers, and in the will of the nation, one and irresistible in the government.  The characteristic of his genius, so well defined, so ill understood, was less audacity than justness.  Beneath the grandeur of his expression is always to be found unfailing good sense.  His very vices could not repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding.  At the foot of the tribune he was a man devoid of shame or virtue:  in the tribune he was an honest man.  Abandoned to private debauchery, bought over by foreign powers, sold to the court in order to satisfy his lavish expenditure, he preserved, amidst all this infamous traffic of his powers, the incorruptibility of his genius.  Of all the qualities of a great man of his age, he was only wanting in honesty.  The people were not his devotees, but his instruments,—­his own glory was the god of his idolatry; his faith was posterity; his conscience existed but in his thought; the fanaticism of his idea was quite human; the chilling materialism of his age had crushed in his heart the expansion, force, and craving for imperishable things.