himself, his wife, and child; his only employment was study, to which he gave himself up with ardour, but it was not sufficient to tame and engross him. He wrote here his "Essay on Despotism," a work full of passion and vigour, into which he poured his own impatience of control. He left behind him no good reputation among the people of Manosque; and, if his wife afterwards refused to join him, she had the excuse that his behaviour as a husband was such as to disgust any young lady of feeling and delicacy. His own conduct did not, however, prevent him from being jealous himself, and this passion, awakened toward his wife, renewed, by the actions it occasioned, the persecutions of his father. A girlish and innocent correspondence had been carried on by his wife before her marriage with the chevalier de Gassaud. This, and other circumstances, combined to excite jealousy in the mind of the husband; a duel became imminent; till, pacified by the representations of the young man's family, and consideration for the reputation of Madame de Mirabeau, he became willing to listen to an explanation. The previous scandal, however, threatened to break an advantageous marriage, on foot between the chevalier and the daughter of the marquis de Tourette. Mirabeau, resolving not to be generous by halves, left Manosque secretly, and repaired with all possible speed to the town of Grasse: he pleaded the cause of the chevalier with such earnest eloquence that the family dismissed their objections, and he hastened to return to his place of exile.