MIRA BEAU.

203

Mentor, and the only servant-master of this young man.Severity will cost me nothing, for with him it is myright and my duty.” The perpetual recurrence to theaccusation of baseness affords some excuse for thefather’s inveteracy ; yet it was certainly ill judged toset a servant over a proud aspiring youth as master, andthis servant, who hated him, was one of the chief en-gines of perpetuating the marquis’s bad opinion. How- 1767 .ever, by placing him beyond the paternal control, under ■® ,atithe impartial jurisdiction of a regiment, the young man 18 ‘had a chance of being fairly treated, and the consequencewas that his good conduct was acknowledged and a brevetrank promised him. He was not allowed to reap anyadvantage : his father kept him so wholly without moneythat he incurred a few debts ; he lost, also, four louis inplay, a vice to which he showed no predilection in afterlife, and we may therefore judge that this trifling losswas accidental. His father’s wrath flamed out. “ He iscast,” he Wrote to his brother, u in the mould of his ma-ternal race, and would devour twenty inheritances andtwelve kingdoms if he could lay his hands on them. ButI can endure as little as I like of that species of evil, anda close and cool prison will soon moderate his appetiteand thin him down.”

Added to this error was the unfortunate circumstanceof an amour, the first outbreak of his passionate nature onemerging from boyhood, in which he was the successfulrival of his superior officer, who thus became his enemy,and joined with the father to crush the young man’s spirit.Mirabeau, in after years, always spoke with greatbitterness of M. de Lambert’s discipline. He escapedfrom it on this occasion, and took refuge in Paris withhis father’s intimate friend, the duke de Nivernois.

His brother-in-law^ husband of his sister, the marquisdu Saillant, mediated between him and his father:he defended himself against accumulated accusations.

His father speaks of his defence as a mass of falsehoodand ingratitude: he meditated, or, rather, was instigated,to send him to the Dutch colonies in India , but milder