With all his errors he was a warm and kind-hearted man, and gifted with undaunted courage. During his political career, his enemies were perpetually endeavouring to embroil him in duels, which he avoided without the most distant suspicion of cowardice being attached to him. He was a man of wit, and many of his sayings are recorded. They are often bitter epigrams on his enemies, and inspired by hatred rather than truth. He called the virtuous La Fayette Grandison-Cromwell; and said of him that he had _bien sauté pour reculer_, as his latter conduct did not come up to his first entrance on life when he went to America. He was the implacable enemy of Necker, who, he says, was "a clock always too slow." While speaking in the national assembly, he pointed to a picture, emblemising Time, with his scythe and his hour-glass always full, exclaiming, "We have taken his scythe, but we have forgotten his time-piece." Of the national assembly he said, "It has Hannibals in plenty, and needs a Fabius." It was the fashion to call Clermont-Tonnerre the Pitt of France: "As you please," said Mirabeau; "but how would Pitt like to be called the Clermont-Tonnerre of England?" His faculty of wit rose sometimes into grandeur. When he spoke of the convulsions that would ensue on the entire overthrow of the monarchy, he cried, "You will have assassinations and massacres; but you will never rise to the execrable height of a civil war." Talleyrand said that he dramatised his death. It is a strange moment for vanity to become paramount; and the chief trait of his death-bed was his gentleness and serenity, and the affection he showed to his friends. Politics occupied him at times; and he said to those about him, "Après ma mort, les factieux se partageront les lambeaux de la monarchie." The great quality of his mind was the power of seizing on any word or idea presented to him, and reproducing it at the right moment, with such vigour and fire as made it omnipotent. It was the eagle eye that enabled him on the instant to discern the right path, or the commanding idea, and to express it with force and majesty. With a lion heart, untiring perseverance, and the strength of a giant, he swept away opposition, inspired confidence, and fixed his standard far within the ranks of the enemy, where none dared touch it. So well could he adapt his very ugliness, his flashing eyes, abundant hair, and marks of physical power, to the sentiments which he expressed, that an actor on hearing him speak in the tribune exclaimed, "Ah! what a pity he was born a gentleman; he has missed his vocation!" He was greater as an orator than a leader. But each day he lived he advanced in the science of party strife. At the last, when he contemplated an organised opposition to the jacobins, he became expert; but it may be believed that he would have found an insuperable obstacle to success in the passions of the people.