It was a wild, and almost chaotic realm, over which this man hoped to rule; but he had infinite faith in his own genius, and built great hopes upon his immense popularity with a people who, in their passions and their prejudices, were changeable as the wind. To a man like Mirabeau, bold to audacity, gifted with marvelous eloquence, and made great by a will strong as iron, to guide this changing element and mould it as his own ambition might direct, seemed the easiest thing on earth. All that day the man spent lounging upon the silken cushions of a low couch, dreaming of the greatness before him, and of the royal lady whose white hand had touched his lips for one instant in the little summer-house at St. Cloud. At last he had conquered his way to that proud, beautiful woman, who still sat upon the tottering throne of France. In her need she had been compelled to stoop to the fascinations of his voice, and blush under the ardent devotion of his eyes. In this he had triumphed over all his compeers—true, it was a triumph, secret as it was sweet. He who had been tried almost as a felon in the courts; imprisoned for rude violations of the law; hunted out of society like a mad dog, was now president of one of the most powerful clubs in France, a leader in the Assembly, and the secret friend of the beautiful queen, who had for years kept him from her presence, as a man too vile for the countenance of a pure wife and highly born lady. No wonder this man lay supinely on his couch, with his arms folded over his head, and his eyes wandering dreamily over the Cupids that peeped at him with laughing eyes from the flowers that clustered and glowed on the frescoed ceiling overhead. Mirabeau had reached that age when ambition becomes a power, and love an intense passion; from that day he turned with loathing from the thing which he had called love in past time. The exalted rank of Marie Antoinette, her superb beauty and brilliant intellect had fired his imagination so completely, that his whole being, for the time, flung off its coarseness and became chivalric. The door opened softly as Mirabeau lay with his large eyes wandering over the flowers, and a pleasant smile on his lips. He cared little what might happen in the Assembly that day; but would go forth to his Jacobin club in the evening, and there exert all the powers of his mind to moderate the ferocious instincts of his compatriots, and lead them to the moderation of his own views so lately inspired by the queen. A woman had been waiting with her hand upon the door for a whole minute, and Mirabeau, in his pleasant preoccupation, knew nothing of it. Louison Brisot stepped across the room, and came close to the couch on which he lay, and spoke to him. Mirabeau started, flung down his arms with an impatient movement, and rose to a half upright position, dropping one foot to the floor, and sinking his elbow deep into the cushions on which his head had rested.