No man could appreciate the misfortune more fully or sensitively than himself. Dumont tells us that, taught by events that a good character would have placed France at his feet, "he would have passed seven times through the fiery furnace to purify his name;" and that, "weeping and sobbing, he was accustomed to exclaim, 'Cruelly do I expiate the errors of my youth!'" And, indeed, the more sensible his heart, the more rich and elevated his soul, the more must his torments have been bitter and redoubled; for the very preciousness of the gifts of nature, the charms of society, even the friendship of those that surrounded him, must have turned but to the increase of his wretchedness! It is easy to understand, then, that the tactics of Mirabeau, in the first days of the revolution, were those of a man outside "a swelling scene," "A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold," which he could only occupy by rudely breaking through a thousand circumvallations of usage, propriety, and public opinion. As it was the boast of Luther, that he, an obscure monk, stood alone for some time against respectable Europe, so Mirabeau, on the eve of his public greatness, was the most isolated politician of his age. "Mean men, in their rising," says Lord Bacon, "most adhere; but great men, that have strength in themselves, were better to maintain themselves indifferent and neutral." Instinctively feeling that this was the policy of his position, when repelled by both sides, he haughtily repelled them in return, and the more he was despised the more inevitable did he make the establishment of his importance. As, without a party, he became one himself, so without a plan he took that of events, and without a policy was content with that of display. In these early days, indeed, his whole plan, system, and policy was to make his individualism tell, to demonstrate, to all parties, what he was worth in journalism as a writer, in the Assembly as an orator, in every thing as a statesman. As he had nothing but himself, it became his business to make the most of the commodity, which, so valueless in the beginning, ended in outworthing all that was opposed to it.