or 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
fire-pan, 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 hucksters 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 qualities 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, snuffed-up) 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 inte