Mirabeau has already undergone the metamorphosis which is wrought in those whose memory is destined to survive: carried from the Pantheon to the sewer, and back from the sewer to the Pantheon, he has raised himself to the full height of that time which today forms his pedestal. We no longer behold the real Mirabeau, but the idealized Mirabeau, the Mirabeau as the painters depict him, in order to make him the symbol or the myth of the period which he represents: he thus becomes both more false and more true. From among so many reputations, so many actors, so many events, so many ruins, there will remain but three men, attached to each of the three great revolutionary epochs: Mirabeau for the aristocracy, Robespierre for the democracy, Bonaparte for the despotism; the monarchy has none: France has paid dear for three reputations which virtue is unable to acknowledge! * The sittings of the National Assembly offered a spectacle of an interest which our "Chambers" are far from approaching. One rose early to find room in the crowded galleries. The deputies arrived eating, talking, gesticulating; they formed groups in the various parts of the house, according to their opinions. The orders of the day were read; after that, the subject agreed upon was set forth, or else an extraordinary motion. There was no question of any insipid point of law; rarely did some scheme of destruction fail to form part of the proceedings. The members spoke for or against; each spoke extempore as best he could. The debates grew stormy; the galleries joined in the discussion, applauded and cheered, hissed and hooted the speakers. The president rang his bell, the deputies apostrophized each other from bench to bench. Mirabeau the Younger[371] took his competitor by the collar; Mirabeau the Elder cried: "Silence, the 'thirty votes'!" One day I was seated behind the royalist opposition; before me was a Dauphiné nobleman, swarthy of visage, short of stature, who jumped upon his seat with rage and said to his friends: "Let us fall upon those ragamuffins, sword in hand!" He pointed in the direction of the majority. The ladies of the markets, who sat knitting in the galleries, heard him, rose from their seats, and all cried at once, their stockings in their hands, and foaming at the mouth: "To the lantern with them!" The Vicomte de Mirabeau, Lautrec[372], and some younger nobles proposed to take the galleries by assault. Soon this tumult was drowned by another: petitioners, armed with pikes, appeared at the bar: "The people are starving," they said: "it is time to take measures against the aristocrats and to rise 'to the level of the situation.'" The president assured these citizens of his respect: "We have our eye upon the traitors," he replied, "and the Assembly will see justice done." [Sidenote: The National Assembly.]