Mirabeau (V. Hugo, Littérature et Philosophie mêlées, Edition nationale, t37) - Boisson after Schommer

"Certainly, he was not an orator in the way these people understood him; he was an orator according to himself, according to his nature, according to his organization, according to his soul, according to his life. He was an orator because he was hated, like Cicero because he was loved. He was an orator because he was ugly, like Hortensius because he was handsome. He was an orator because he had suffered, because he had failed, because he had been, still very young and in the age when all the openings of the heart blossom, rejected, mocked, humiliated, despised, defamed, hunted, despoiled, banned, exiled, imprisoned, condemned ; because, like the people of 1789, of whom he was the most complete symbol, he had been held in minority and guardianship far beyond the age of reason; because paternity had been as hard on him as royalty was on the people; because, like the people, he had been badly brought up; because, like the people, a bad education had made him grow a vice at the root of every virtue. He was an orator because, thanks to the wide-open avenues opened up by the upheavals of 1789, he had at last been able to extravasate into society all his inner bubblings so long compressed within the family; because, abrupt, uneven, violent, vicious, cynical, sublime, diffuse, incoherent, even more full of instincts than thoughts, his feet soiled, his head shining, he was in everything similar to the fiery years in which he shone, and whose every day passed marked on the forehead by his word. Finally, to those imbecilic men who understood little enough of their time to address to him, through a thousand objections, often ingenious ones at that, this question: if he believed himself to be a serious orator... he could have answered with a single word: Ask the monarchy that ends, ask the revolution that begins!" (1834 - Sur Mirabeau)