My great table-companion enlarged upon foreign politics, and hardly spoke of politics at home, although it was the latter which occupied him; but he let fall a few words of sovereign contempt for those men who proclaim themselves superior by reason of the indifference which they affect for misfortunes and crimes. Mirabeau was by nature generous, sensible to friendship, ready to forgive injuries. Notwithstanding his immorality, he had not been able to warp his conscience; he was only corrupt for himself: his firm and upright mind did not treat murder as a sublime effort of the intelligence; he had no sort of admiration for the sewer or the slaughter-house. Nevertheless, Mirabeau was not wanting in arrogance; he was an outrageous boaster; although he had become a cloth-merchant in order to be elected by the Third Estate (the order of the nobility having committed the honourable folly of rejecting him), he was in love with his birth: "a refractory hawk," says his father, "whose nest was laid among four towers." He did not forget that he had figured at Court, ridden in the coaches, and hunted with the King. He insisted upon being addressed by his title of count; he adhered to his colours, and put his servants into livery when every one else ceased to do so. In and out of season, he referred to "his kinsman," Admiral de Coligny. The _Moniteur_ having spoken of him as Riquet[370]: "Are you aware," he said angrily to the journalist, "that with your 'Riquet' you have set Europe at cross-purposes for three days?" He repeated that impudent and well-known jest: "In any other family, my brother the viscount would be the wit and the worthless fellow; in my family, he is the fool and the good man." [Illustration: H. G. Mirabeau.] Some biographers ascribe the phrase to the viscount, comparing himself humbly with the other members of the family. The ground-work of Mirabeau's opinions was monarchical; he once uttered these fine words: "I have tried to cure the French of the superstition of monarchy and to substitute its cult." In a letter intended to be laid before Louis XVI. he wrote: "I should not like to have worked only for a vast destruction." This, nevertheless, is what happened to him: Heaven, to punish us for making a bad use of our talents, gives us occasion to repent of our successes. [Sidenote: Mirabeau's power.]