llect, he has will, force
beyond other men. A man not with _logic-spectacles_, but with an
_eye_! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed
sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity
there; a Reality, not an artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having
struggled "forty years against despotism," and "made away with all
formulas," shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the
same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off
despotism, to make away with _her_ old formulas,--having found them
naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with _such_
formulas;--and even go _bare_, if need be, till she have found new
ones.

Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti
Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the
slouch hat, he steps along there. A fiery, fuliginous mass, which
could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with
smoke! And now it has got _air_; it will burn its whole substance, its
whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange
lot! Forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor
enough; then victory over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes
heaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in
flame and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and
Wonder-sign of an amazed Europe;--and then lies hollow, cold forever!
Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest of them all:
in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none
like and none second to thee.

But now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be
the meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking
man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off)
troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain
future time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final
shade of which may be the pale sea-green. That greenish-colored
(_verdatre_) individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is
Maximilien Robespierre. The son of an Advocate; his father founded
Mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender.
Maximilien, the first-born, was thriftily educated; he had brisk
Camille Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at
Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron,
to let him depart thenc