e artifices and assumptions by which the members of the
Third Estate put forward pretensions which were designed to make them
masters of the whole Assembly; nor is it necessary to unfold at length the
combination of audacity and craft, aided by the culpable weakness of
Necker, by which they ultimately carried the point they contended for,
providing that the three orders should deliberate and vote together as one
united body in one chamber. Emboldened by their success, they even
proceeded to a step which probably not one among them had originally
contemplated; and, as if one of their principal objects had been to disown
the authority of the king by which they had been called together, they
repudiated the title of States-general, and invented for themselves a new
name, that of "The National Assembly," which, as it had never been heard
of before, seemed to mark that they owed their existence to the nation,
and not to the sovereign.

But the discussions that took place before all these points were settled,
presented, besides the importance of the conclusion which was adopted,
another feature of powerful interest, since it was in them that the
members first heard the voice of the Count de Mirabeau, who, more than any
other deputy, was supposed during the ensuing year to be able to sway the
whole Assembly, and to hold the destinies of the nation in his hands.

Necker's daughter, the celebrated Baroness de Stael, wife of the Swedish
embassador, who was present at the opening of the States, which, as her
father's daughter, she regarded with exulting confidence as the body of
legislators who were to regenerate the nation, remarked, as the long
procession passed before her eyes, that of the six hundred deputies of the
Commons[7], the Count de Mirabeau alone bore a name which was previously
known; and he was manifestly out of his place as a representative of the
Commons. His history was a strange one. He was the eldest son of a
Provencal noble, of Italian origin, great wealth, and a ferocious
eccentricity of character, which made him one of the worst possible
instructors for a youth of brilliant talents, unbridled passions, and a
disposition equally impetuous in its pursuit of good and of evil. Even
before he arrived at manhood he had become notorious for every kind of
profligacy; while his father, in an almost equal degree, provoked the
censure of those who interested themselves in the career of a youth of
undeniable ability, by