Published in 1905. A biography of Mirabeau, French revolutionary and political leader whose life, prior to 1789, was characterized by wild excesses, which ruined his health and caused him to be repeatedly jailed - several times at the request of his father, with whom he carried on a public quarrel. In 1785 he was exiled to England. In 1786 he was sent to Prussia on a secret mission. He betrayed his government's trust by publishing his unedited reports to Paris, which contained accounts of scandal and intrigue in the Prussian Court. He was a supporter of a constitutional monarchy and tried to reconcile the reactionary court of Louis XVI with the increasingly radical forces of the Revolution. Many of Mirabeau's efforts to achieve a reconciliation between the conflicting aspirations of conservatives and radicals often involved proposals that seemed way too extreme to some interests and way too moderate to others. He died in 1791.