would seem, by some saline medicines, he | derived so much relief, that during the night, and part of Tuesday, he seemed to progress to assured recovery. He surveyed the improvement with a gratification in some shape peculiar. The possessor of ten men's life," to use his own phrase, he had a thousand men's love of it. His mind, full of gigantic projects, which his superhuman activity was every day ripening into form and fact, had found at last an arena and an epoch every way worthy of its aspirations. Before him was an undefined and measureless career of ambition and glory; around him, a circle of friends whose affections he prized, and, at least, as warmly returned in one word, life at this moment offered itself to him as the happiness and immortality of a heaven, while the creed he confided in showed him in death at best but a grave. The conviction then, of his recovery, filled him with delight; and describing as sweet, doubly sweet, the feeling of owing life to a friend, he reveled in expressions of thankfulness and affection. They were, alas! of short duration; for on the Wednesday morning his paroxysms reappeared with a violence which excluded more than the faintest hopes of recovery.

Whatever the discussions of men, Mirabeau was felt by them all to be the soul of the Revolution; and the report of his danger, spreading through Paris, carried concern, not to say consternation, to every house. After the worse news of Wednesday's relapse, a sort of common instinct filled the street with successive multitudes, who, barricading each end against vehicles, held it in almost military occupation till his death. They crowded the court of his house; filled the landing-place, and penetrated to the very antechamber, mournful in their silence and respectful in their curiosity. Bulletins were each day frequently issued, seized by a thousand hands, and, with every verbal announcement won in the intervals from visitors to the sick man's chamber, circulated as by electricity through the capital. From every quarter, as by magic, sprung up ardent testimonials of allegiance and affection, like those which posterity, in mingled accesses of ignorance and gratitude, pay to the demigods of races, or the founders of nations. Twelve hundred letters of a varied sympathy passed into his house; and as an indication of their affection, we are told, that one of them pressed on the physician the then vaunted resource of transfusion, and offered, as a means, the blood "to the last

1

drop," of the respectable writer. It became a law and bienseance for all public bodies existing under the Revolution, formally to address their condolence or their inquiries. The king sent twice a day, officially, and more frequently in secret-the Republicans thanking God that he escaped the popularity of a personal visit; and the Jacobins, adopting the popular feeling they alone failed to share, in their meeting of Wednesday, notwithstanding the opposition of Alexander Lameth and Petion, voted a large deputation. Preceded by an immense multitude, the deputies, with Barnave at their head, advanced from their celebrated hall to the house of their traitor chief. The vocabulary of patriotic grief was exhausted in their messages, and, as if there were reciprocal services in their relative situations, Barnave, unexpectedly affectionate and obliging, was met with a greeting and emotion equally warm from his illustrious rival. In the recalcitrant Jacobins, however, who courageously declined to do honor to a hand they had seen to a royalist conspiracy against the assembly, the wounded vanity or alarmed susceptibilities of Mirabeau could discern no merit. "I knew them for scoundrels," said he, with bitterness; " but fools I did not think them!" He found his consolation in the affection of the people-""Twas glorious," he said, “to consecrate my life to their weal-it is sweet to end it in their service!"

Toward the evening of Wednesday, all his pains lessened, except the difficulty of breathing; but at midnight he was visited by a return of the old symptoms. A delicate consideration, which formed one of his best traits, prevented him through the night's sufferings from disturbing Cabanis, who was asleep in another room, and who, descending some hours later, found his patient half suffocated, writhing in spasmodic agony, and showing all the phenomena which, while presaging a day of torture and peril, stamped in the visage the obvious and immoveable impress of death's possessionship. A vigorous recourse to local depletion, with the use of musk in frequent doses for the spasms, caused, or at all events preceded some mitigation of his symptoms, without, however, lessening his danger; and we are now brought to a new scene in the imposing tragedy.

Mirabeau, who had consented to the rigid exclusion of his friends, to give himself up more entirely to the resources of medicine, now had them recalled, and, save for the occasional distraction of an illusive hope, addressed himself wholly to the great business

The Count de La Marck, a Belgian, better known by his subsequent title of Prince of Aremberg, had been the negotiator between Mirabeau and the court, and now assiduously watched for it-the great scene in which the death of the monarchy was enacting. With him was Talleyrand, who, as a joint supporter of the minister Calonne, in his day of power, was generally supposed to have separated from Mirabeau, on the furtive publication of the Berlin Correspondence, but who, though in diplomatic alienation from him in the Constituent Assembly, seems to have preserved all through a mysterious identity of political action. With the death-bed, however, dissolved all coldness, real or simulated, and the invited Talleyrand seizing his friend's hand, with the characteristic assurance, "While one half of Paris are at your door en permanance, I have been there thrice a-day with the other half, to offer my sympathies," met a cordial welcome from the dying statesman, who, presenting him a discourse on wills, drawn up for him by a literary acquaintance (Reybaz), under his own instructions, we may suppose said

"These are the last thoughts the world will receive from me! I make you the depository of this paper-you will read it when I shall be no more-it is my last legacy to the Assembly-it will be curious to hear a man who is no more declaring against wills, after just making his own."

Toward evening the report of cannon awoke him from a doze.

66

Your superior, the Bishop of Autun, has been before you," was the reply; "he reserves to himself the honor of my conversion.'

His stomach refused food. "When the first functionary becomes worthless, the business must soon end. You are a great physician," continued he, to Cabanis, "but there is a greater than you—the author of the wind, that overthrows-of the water, that penetrates and fecundates all— of the fire, that vivifies and decomposes

all !"

Lamarck broke into tears.

"It is a touching spectacle," remarked

Mirabeau, "to see a calm and unimpassioned man struggling with a sorrow he can no longer conceal!"

Cabanis related to him that he had been besieged on all sides by a thousand importunities, to try new empirical remedies.

"Where am I, then," he exclaimed, "that old women and quacks pretend to seize hold of me? I make you responsible for all that may happen, and place the responsiblity on your conscience."

His valet Teisch, an old smuggler, of singular character and history, approached. "Well, my poor Teisch," asked the master, "how is it with you to-day ?"

"I would, sir, you were in my place." "I wouldn't that you were in mine." Through the interval, his sufferings had continued to increase, his breathing had become more difficult, and his restlessness proportionally great. To overpower pain, and lose the consciousness of the worse anguish of reacting despondency, he sought with avidity the conversation of his friends. Inspired by the excitement of their homage, his wonderful intellect, defying death to the last, untouched in "the wreck of baser matter," vindicated in these august dialogues all that startling brilliancy and irresistible empire which marked and immortalized the loftier epochs of his public oratory. There was about it the collected splendor and magnificence of an autumnal sunset.*

After a fit of severe vomiting, he went to sleep. Awakening toward the morning, he asked a female attendant, who alone remained in the room, if he had not dreamed aloud that some murder was going on in the house. Assured to the contrary, he asked for the key of his writing-desk, and the valet being called, was sent for it to the secretary. Meanwhile the morning breaking, he ordered his bed to be moved to the window, to catch the first glimpses of the sun, exclaiming, as he gazed on it, "If that be not God, it is his cousin-german." Then addressing Cabanis in the assured and calm tone of his days of health, he continued, "I shall die to-day! At that point, there remains but one thingto be sprinkled with perfumes, covered with flowers, and lapped in music, so that I may enter happy the sleep that ends not! Quick! let them be called, that I may be washed, and my whole toilet seen to!"

He had often brooded on death, and (his thought never far from the act) sought to realize to the last his ideal of a great one.

* Dumont's Souvenirs, in Cabanis' "Journal."

"Pray, no weakness-worthy neither of you nor of me. It is a moment we must know how to support you no less than 1. Pledge me your word, then, that you will not let me suffer useless tortures. I wish to enjoy without alloy the presence of those dear to me!"

De La Marck coming in, he resumed,

"I have some matters to communicate to both-I have much pain in speaking-do you think I shall be better able at another moment ?"

Sinking before their eyes, he was recommended repose, with a suggestion to speak

at once.

"I understand," he rejoined: "in that case, be seated-you here, and you there" (pointing to the side of his bed).

He then explained with lucidity his private arrangements, expressed his wishes with regard to the persons he left behind him, and entering on the state of public affairs, in which De La Marck had been all along his confidential adviser, he expressed, in general terms, the truths epitomized in a sentence which has since been celebrated

"I carry to the tomb with me the hopes of the monarchy, which is soon to be the prey of the factious."

Interested in the designs of England, the country, after his own, ever first in his thoughts

That Pitt," said he, "is the minister of preparations; he succeeds by what he menaces more even than by what he does. If I had lived, I fancy I should have given him some trouble."

He concluded a conversation which lasted three quarters of an hour, by calling to him M. Frochot. Taking his two hands, he placed them in those of Cabanis and De La Marck

"I bequeath," said he, "to your kindness my friend Frochot; you have seen his attachment to me-he merits yours."

He now lost speech, and his eyes, the play of his lips, and occasional kisses, expressed

the overflowing affection with which he accepted the attentions of his friends. His hands, cold and clammy, remained in theirs hour after hour. He was calmly dying, but toward eight the violence of his sufferings. recurred. He made a special sign to Cabanis personally for drink; but refusing all that was offered, he made a motion for pen and ink. Supplied, he wrote the one word"Dormir." He wanted the eternal sleep of opium; but Cabanis, affecting not to understand his meaning, he again took up the pen, and wrote the dubious, but terrible question, "Do you fear, then, that death, or that which approximates it, may produce a dangerous sentence?" Still not understood, or, at all events, not obeyed, he wrote the memorable words preserved for us, as the dying man penned them, "While it was thought that opium might fix the malady, it was well not to administer it; but now that there is no resource but in the great unknown, (the phenomenæ in connu), why not try it? Can you leave your friend of the rack, perhaps, through days?" The overwhelmed Cabanis made poor answers. Promising laudanum, he wrote for a trivial composing draught. While awaiting it, uncertain whether it fulfilled or not the awful compact, pain and impatience gave back the dying man his speech, and he exclaimed

My sufferings are intolerable-I have within me a hundred years of life, but not a moment's courage. You are deceiving me," he continued, as the messenger for the draught failed to return.

He was assured that the most urgent instructions had been sent to the doctors.

"Ah! the doctors!-the doctors!" he exclaimed in agony ; and turning to Cabanis,

Were you not my doctor and my friend? and did you not promise to spare me the pains of such a death? Must I carry with me the regret of having confided in you?"

Dr. Petit entered, and Mirabeau became additionally anxious about the opium.

"Swear to me," said he eagerly to Cabanis, "that you will not tell Petit what you are preparing for me!" These were the last words of the great orator.

The draught painfully expected came at last. He snatched the vessel, and drinking it off, turned on his right side, with a convulsive movement, raised his eyes toward heaven, and died!

It was Saturday, January 2, 1791, about half-past eight, A.M., in the forty-second year of his age.

While the dying man was thus vainly

wrestling to be even with the high business | he had on hand, there was enacting in the other parts of his house a curious and agitating scene, almost realizing those figments of assassination that had occupied his morning dream. The valet, sent, as we have seen, for the collection of Mirabeau's secret papers, was refused admittance to the room of the secretary, who, locking himself in, asseve rated that the key of the secretaire was not there, and that the valet should not be admitted. On a threat of bursting open the door, Comps was heard to fall heavily on the floor, and on forcing a way into the room, he was seen covered with blood flowing from some small wounds in the breast and throat-by his side lying the cause-a penknife, smeared with blood. To the questions of the affrighted household, Comps answered nothing, save that, "for one crime more, it was hardly worth while!" Persisting still not to give up the key, he at first pretended that it was locked in his own secretaire, the key of which he had broken, but when told that a locksmith should be sent for, he recollected, that although he had the key he could not give it up till De La Marck's arrival, before which, however, it was found hidden under the ashes in his grate.

There was here a mystery nobody could fathom. Comps had been for years in the service of Mirabeau; and no small part of his recommendation was the supposed attachment which, already evidenced by two duels, made him ever ready to risk his life in the defence of his master. Had he sold some valuable documents of Mirabeau? This was the opinion of De La Marck and the court. Had he compromised himself in some attempt against his master's health? This was the suspicion of the public. Inquiry was demanded, and the rumor spreading to the surrounding crowd, the officers of justice entered on an inquiry shortly after the break of day. The evidence of Comps only added by its contradictions and falsehoods to the imbroglio. At first, he had thought himself poisoned, and awakening in the morning, found wounds about which he knew nothing. He appealed for his character to the confidence of Mirabeau, who "allowed him to possess valuable secrets, which people feared he would one day divulge." At a second interrogatory, he pretended that his head had been turned from a number of domestic circumstances, which, inducing him to fancy that he and his master were poisoned, made him adopt the idea of

suicide.

Fourteen days later, he recalled all he had previously affirmed, especially his insinuations against the friends of his master, and took the nobler ground, that he stabbed himself in affliction for the death of so exalted a master.

Three facts remain, which offer the only additional clue out of the labyrinth. First, Comps, at the time of the decease, had in his possession thirty-eight thousand francs, money confided to him by the court for his master. Secondly, Petion and Camille Demoulins, the Jacobin leaders, had seen in the handwriting of Mirabeau his elaborate plan for annihilating the National Assembly. Thirdly, it seems not very unlikely that though there were natural causes to produce death, that Mirabeau had yet not escaped poison. Are we, then, to infer, that Comps, with the possession of his master's money and political secrets, communicated with the all-active Jacobins ?-that his cupidity was excited by the possession of treasures, or his perfidy compromised by the retention of documents ?-if not, where is the explanation of his vague charges of poison, his pretences at madness, and his preference of all expedients, even to suicide, to the exposure of the secretaire ? We know of none, save in the hypothesis that the secretary, bewildered, was obeying the private orders of De La Marck, who anxiously secured Mirabeau's papers for the court the very instant he had died. And that same instant the news passed from the dead man's room to the multitude, and thence through Paris. Forthwith the shops were shut, the theatres closed, commerce stood still, the business of life stagnated in every channel, and a cloud of mingled incertitude and consternation settled in every face, as if the spirit of the coming carnage, born out of the very dissolution of genius, had already thrown its mighty shadow athwart the soul of society.

The Jacobin Club, early mirroring the movements its leaders could not control, at once decreed to attend the funeral, to mourn eight days, to honor the anniversary, and to have his bust. The representatives of the nation, in their early sitting, heard the event with the incredulity of its greatness, and cries often repeated, "Ah, he is dead!" Barrere, ascending the tribune, in a brief speech, in which oratory was lost in emotion, moved the solemn register of their regret, and proposed their attendance by deputation at the funeral. The deputies, anticipating the sentiment, received it with the universal cry, "We will all go!" The