His position demanded the most careful reflection. His angry father spared no pains to discover his place of refuge: he wrote to Saint-Mauris, telling him to prepare a "healthy and dry, but well barred and bolted dungeon for his son; and not to permit him the slightest communication by writing or in person with any one." Hopeless of softening the marquis, Mirabeau wrote to Malesherbes, the minister so distinguished in France for benevolence and liberality; but Malesherbes mediated in vain with his father, and, at length, told Mirabeau that he had but one resource, which was to withdraw from his country, to enter foreign service, and pursue the career of arms, for which his birth, talents, and bravery, fitted him. Mirabeau was averse to renouncing his country; again and again he applied by letters, written either by himself or mediating friends, to his father, who at last replied, that he renounced having any thing to do with him--told him that no country was so foreign to him as his own; and, banishing him for ever from his family, dissolved all natural and social ties that still held his son to France. Treated with this haughty cruelty, Mirabeau could not avoid contrasting the marks of hatred and scorn, which he received from every other, with the devoted love of her who was ready to sacrifice all to him. But, though conjugal fidelity was held in slight regard and little practised in France in those days, the carrying off a married woman was treated as a crime to be punished by death or perpetual imprisonment, and Mirabeau could not yet consent to lose himself or his mistress utterly. M. de Monnier, informed by Saint-Mauris of the attachment of his wife, surrounded her by spies, and treated her with the utmost severity. By the advice of Mirabeau she left her husband, and took refuge with her own family at Dijon. She found no kindness there; her angry father refused to see her--her mourning mother caused her to be strictly watched--her brother and sister taunted and insulted her. She was driven to despair, and declared to her lover that she would destroy herself, if by no other means she could escape the cruelty shown by all around. For several months Mirabeau combated the passion rooted in his own heart, and that which drove madame de Monnier to desperation. He had escaped from France and gained the frontier: he might easily have now entered on a military career in a foreign state, but devoted love bound him to Sophie, who was on the eve of being imprisoned in a convent, and who, revolting from such tyranny, believed that every genuine duty and affection of life bound her to him she loved, and had become resolved to devote her life to him. After much hesitation, many months spent in wanderings in Switzerland, dogged close the while by emissaries of his father, whose pursuit he baffled, and whose strength and patience he wearied out; after many fruitless endeavours to avoid the catastrophe,