Talleyrand was the intimate friend of Mirabeau, or, to speak with more precision, the great tribune made a tool of him. They had lived together, and together had prepared their works for the Assembly. The popular orator had just been attacked by the mortal disease which carried him off in so rapid and mysterious a manner, and the Bishop of Autun was present when his friend breathed his last. It was not as a ghostly comforter affording him the consolations of his ministry, it was not as a Catholic bishop pointing to a world beyond the grave when those eloquent lips were about to be sealed in death; M. de Talleyrand sat by the bedside of the dying man as the depository of his last thoughts and of his political labours, which led to the destruction of the monarchy. Mirabeau had committed to writing a work upon the equal division of inheritance among the different members of a family, and on the right of making testamentary dispositions, it being the object of the Revolutionists to overturn civil rights as they had already destroyed political ones, because it was well known they were intimately connected. The Bishop of Autun undertook to read the discourse of Mirabeau in the name of his friend at the National Assembly, and excited the most lively enthusiasm while repeating the last words of the orator whose career was now at an end. The life of Mirabeau had been, in some respects, the reaction of a mind filled with strong passions against the persecutions he had endured as a son from the hand of a severe and inflexible father, and his discourse upon limiting the right of making a will and on the equal division of inheritance affords the most certain proof of it. The gift of eloquence was held in the most enthusiastic estimation by the Constituent Assembly, it resolved the greatest part of its business into brilliant oratorical theories, resting upon the ideas of demolition, which were the offspring of the eighteenth century, and as Talleyrand had some difficulty in ascending the tribune, he played but a secondary part at that time. He excited attention principally by his management of business and by his assiduous attendance on committees; it does not appear that he had attained, even at this period, to the reputation of taciturn ability enjoyed by the Abbé Siéyès, and I seldom meet with his name in important and brilliant discussions.