M her aged husband. The lovers, happy for some months, took refuge in
Holland; they were seized there, separated and shut up, the one in a
convent and the other in the dungeon of Vincennes. Love, which, like
fire in the veins of the earth, is always detected in some crevice of
man's destiny, lighted up in a single and ardent blaze all the passions
of Mirabeau. In his vengeance it was outraged love that he appeased; in
liberty it was love which he sought and which delivered him; in study it
was love which still illustrated his path. Entering his cell an obscure
man, he quitted it a writer, orator, statesman, but perverted--ripe for
anything, even ready to sell himself, in order to buy fortune and
celebrity. The drama of life had been conceived in his head; he wanted
only the stage,
