Gabriel Honore Riqnetti Mirabeau, count de, a French author and statesman, born on his father's estate of Bignon, near Nemours, March 9, 1749, died in Paris, April 2, 1791. A huge-headed infant, who had come into the world with a pair of grinders, one foot twisted, and tongue-tied, disfigured when three years old by confluent smallpox, he grew up "as ugly as the nephew of Satan," but giving signs of bodily strength, passionate temper, and intellectual power. His father was a philanthropist and the author of a work entitled V Ami des homines, but was a tyrant at home, and tried to subdue his son by severity and contempt. The boy was educated at first by private tutors, and then was entered at a military school in Paris, under the assumed name of Pierre Buffiere, because his family were ashamed of him. On July 19, 1767, his father placed him as a volunteer in the Berry regiment of cavalry, under a colonel notorious for his severity. He contracted a few debts, lost 40 louis at the gaming table, and surpassed his colonel in the affections of a young girl at Saintes. These offences brought upon him the wrath of his father, who in the autumn of 1768 banished him by a lettre de cachet to the fortress on the isle of Re. Here he made a friend of his jailer, who reported favorably concerning him, and his father procured him a commission as second lieutenant in the regiment of Lorraine, which was sent to Corsica in 1769. During a year of hard service he evinced such alacrity, courage, and fidelity as to command the esteem of his officers and the affections of his comrades.

On his return he was sent to his uncle, the bailli of Mirabeau in Provence, who undertook to conciliate his father. At last Mirabeau was allowed to assume his true title, and was presented at court. By his father's advice he married, June 22, 1772, Marie Emilie de Covet, the only daughter of the marquis of Mari-gnane. She had no portion, and he soon became involved in pecuniary difficulties. His father not only declined to help him, but prevented the marquis of Marignane from doing so, and on Aug. 23, 1774, imprisoned him in the castle of If at Marseilles; and when his wife and family prayed for his release, he had him removed, May 25, 1775, to the fort of Joux, in the Jura mountains. Being allowed occasionally to visit the neighboring town of Pontarlier, Mirabeau fell in love with Sophie, marchioness de Monnier, the young and gifted wife of an old magistrate. In August, 1776, he eloped with her to Verrieres, Switzerland. A few weeks later they were in Amsterdam, where Mirabeau, under the fictitious name of Saint-Mathieu, tried to make a living by writing for Dutch publishers. He made some translations from the English, and wrote his Avis aux Hessois, a pamphlet against the Hessian sale of soldiers to England for service in the American war.

On May 10, 1777, he and his paramour were condemned by the tribunal of Pontarlier, he being sentenced to be beheaded for "forcible abduction and seduction," while she was condemned to imprisonment for life. On May 14 they were arrested and taken to Paris; he was imprisoned at Vincennes, and she was sent to a convent at Gien. His father had resolved to keep him a prisoner for life. In his dungeon he constantly wrote love letters to Sophie (a favor which had been granted to him by the chief of police, as the only means of preventing his suicide), and accomplished a good deal of literary work, the most important part of which was his Lettres de cachet et prisons diktat. In spite of the fact that he was attacked by several serious diseases, and was losing his eyesight, his father was deaf to all appeals, until the death of his little grandson suggested the "necessity of perpetuating the family," and Mirabeau regained his liberty Dec. 13, 1780, after an imprisonment of three years and a half. He at once set to work to settle a warfare that had been going on between his parents for many years; but here he failed.

His mother was for ever alienated from him; but the success which she obtained in her lawsuit against her husband was followed by a reconciliation between father and son, May 20,1781. Meanwhile Mirabeau had had an interview with Sophie; but jealousy had sprung up between them, they parted in anger, and in 1789 she committed suicide. An attempt at reconciliation with his wife was unsuccessful, and he resorted to legal proceedings for her recovery. These he conducted himself, with marked ability and eloquence. His pleadings before the parliament of Aix created deep emotion among the people of that city, the majority of whom sided with him; but one half of the judges were relatives of Marignane, and the court decreed, July 5, 1783, that the wife should remain separated from her husband. Though defeated, Mirabeau became a popular idol. After a futile attempt to appeal the suit, he went to England, where he published his Considerations sur Vordre de Cincinnatus, and his Doiites sur la liberie de VEscaut, a defence of the Dutch monopoly against the designs of the emperor Joseph II. He returned to Paris in April, 1785, and wrote several able pamphlets on financial subjects.

At the close of this year he visited Berlin, whore ho published a pamphlet upon Cagliostro and Lavater, and Moses Mendelssohn, ou la Reform politique des Juifs. Alter paying a short visit to Paris, he returned with a secret mission from the French ministry. For six months he held a semi-official correspondence, and accumulated materials for a great work upon the Prussian monarchy. In 1787 he returned to France, and wrote a pamphlet, Denunciation de Vagiotage, directed against Calonne, and followed some time after by a similar attack on Necker's policy. Being threatened with another lettre de cachet, he went to Brunswick, where he completed his work De la monarchic prus-sienne, which was published the next year (8 vols. 8vo and 4 vols. 4to). With the exception of the few months of his mission to Prussia, he had recently been greatly embarrassed by pecuniary difficulties; but now he found himself in the most wretched situation, and it was probably under the pressure of sheer penury that lie published, under the title of Histoire secrete de la cour de Berlin, his confidential letters to the French ministry. This publication was ordered to be burned by the executioner.

The convocation of the states general being now announced, he went to Provence in the beginning of 1789, and presented himself for election to the nobility of this province; but he soon drew upon himself their implacable hostility by his boldness in the discussions as to the mode of election. He was finally expelled from their assembly, as having no fief of his own, and threw himself into the arms of the third estate. Several times he was called upon by the authorities to exhort the people during riotous disturbances. He was elected to the states general for both Marseilles and Aix, and decided to sit for Aix. In the assembly he never had a party; but by logic and eloquence he swayed it at will on almost every important occasion. He encouraged the third estate to maintain their rights against the pretensions of the other orders, and at the end of ihe royal sitting of June 23 he sent the grand master of ceremonies back to the king with this bold answer: "Go and tell your master we are here by the power of the people, and that we are only to be driven out by that of the bayonet." But, detesting mob license no less than tyranny, he advocated the royal prerogative of the veto, and, while "utterly opposed to a counter revolution," declared himself ready to make an effort for "the restoration of the kind's legitimate authority as the only means of saving France." In consequence of this, part of his debts, about 80,000 francs, were secretly paid by order of the king, and he recieved a monthly pension of 0,000 francs He also received four notes of 250,000 francs each; but these were given back to the king at Mirabeaa's death.

This has been cited as evidence of his venality, though he pursued a line of policy dictated by his convictions. On May 20, 1790, in an elaborate oration, he supported the king's right to declare peace or war, in opposition to several celebrated orators, and especially Barnave, whose popularity was now more than equal to his own. Barnave was borne in triumph, while Mirabeau was charged with treason and corruption. Three days later he ascended the tribune, defended himself with fervid and convincing eloquence, and came out triumphant. The mass of business which Mirabeau now carried on simultaneously was prodigious. In addition to his duties as a deputy, he published a journal, which, first under the title of Journal des Mats Generaux, then Lettres d mes Constituants, and finally Courrier de Provence, gave a report of the sittings, and freely discussed all the questions of the day. In these labors he called around him coadjutors, such as Dumont, Duroveray, Rei-baz, and others, who not only wrote for his periodical, but assisted him in the preparation of documents, and even of his speeches. But his strength became exhausted by his herculean labors, rendered still more dangerous by high living and licentiousness.

On March 27, 1791, though very ill, he occupied his seat in the assembly and spoke five times. When he went home, his friend and physician Cabanis saw that his end was approaching. The news of his illness spread over Paris like a public calamity; the chaussee d'Antin, the street in which he lived, was thronged by the multitude; bulletins were printed and distributed every hour; twice a day the king sent to his house for tidings. After a night of terrific suffering, at the dawn of day he addressed Cabanis: "My friend, I shall die to-day. When one has come to such a juncture, there remains only one thing to be done; that is, to be perfumed, crowned with flowers, and surrounded with music, in order to enter sweetly into that slumber from which there is no awaking." He ordered his bed to be brought near the window, and looked with rapture at the brightness of the sun and the freshness of his garden. His death was mourned by the whole nation; every one felt that the ruling spirit of the revolution had passed away.

His body was carried in pomp by the assembly and the people to the church of Ste. Genevieve; but three years later, by order of the convention, it was removed to the churchyard of St. Catherine, the burial place of criminals. - Editions of Mirabeau's works have been published bv Barthe (8 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1819-'20), and by Merilhou (9 vols. 8vo, 1825-'7); but neither of these collections is complete, while their biographical notices are far from correct. Many of his productions have had but one edition, and are now difficult to find. The Memoires biographiques, litteraires et poli-tiques de Mirabeau, by Lucas Montigny, his adopted son (9 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1834-'5), are as yet, in spite of serious defects, the most valuable source of information on the subject. See also Correspondance entre le comte de Mirabeau et le comte de La March pendant les annees 1789, 1790 et 1791 (3 vols., Paris, 1851); Dumont's posthumous Souvenirs (1831); Schneidewind's Mirabeau und seine Zeit (Leipsic, 1831); " Mi-rabeau, a Life History" (London, 1848); Ver-morel, Mirabeau, sa vie, ses opinions et ses dis-cours (5 vols., Paris, 1864-'6); Keynald, Mirabeau et la constituante (Paris, 1872); and Lomenie, Mirabeau et son pere (Paris, 1874).