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how much they loved him. Camille Desmoulins, who was then waging war so violently against him, feels his heart yearn once more towards his former friend; and the furious editors of the "Revolutions of Paris," who were at that moment proposing the suppression of royalty, say that the king has sent to inquire about Mirabeau, and add, "Let us feel grateful that Louis XVI. did not go himself; it would have occasioned a fatal diversion; for the people would have adored him."

On the Tuesday evening, the crowd thronged about the sick man's door. On the Wednesday, the Jacobins sent him a deputation, headed by Barnave, from whom he received with pleasure an obliging expression that was related to him. Charles de Lameth had refused to join the deputation.

Mirabeau was afraid of being beset by priests, and had given orders that the curate should be told, if he came, that he had seen, or was to see, his friend, the bishop of Autun.

Nobody was ever more noble and affectionate in death. He spoke of his life as of the past, and of himself, who had been, and had ceased to be. He would have no other physician than his friend Cabanis, and was totally given up to friendship and to the idea of France. What gave him the most uneasiness in dying, was the doubtful threatening attitude of the English, who seemed to be preparing war. "That Pitt," said he, "is governing with threats, rather than with deeds; I should have given him some trouble, if I had lived."

They spoke to him of the extraordinary eagerness of the people in inquiring about his health, and of the religious respect and silence of the crowd which was afraid of troubling him. "Ah! the people," said he, "such good people well deserve that a man should sacrifice himself for them, and do everything to found and strengthen their liberty. It was my glory to live for them; and it is my consolation to feel that I am dying amidst the people."

He was full of gloomy presentiments about the destiny of France: "I am carrying away with me," said he, "the funeral of monarchy; its remnants will become the prey of the factious."

The report of a cannon having been heard, he exclaimed, with a start: "Is this already the funeral of Achilles?"

"In the morning of the 2nd of April," says Cabanis," he ordered his windows to be opened, and said to me in a firm tone: Friend, I shall die to-day. On such a day, it only remains to perfume oneself, and then, crowned with flowers, and surrounded with music, to be lulled agreeably to that sleep from which there is no waking.' He then called his valetde-chambre: Come,' said he, 'prepare to shave me, and to dress me carefully and completely.' He ordered his bed to be moved nearer an open window, in order that he might contemplate the first symptoms of vernal vegetation on the trees in his little garden. The sun was shining; and he exclaimed: If this be not God, it is at least his cousin-german.' Soon after, he lost the use of speech; but he still replied by signs to the proofs of friendship which we showed him. The slightest attentions affected him, and caused him to smile; and when we approached him, he did all he could to embrace us."

His sufferings being excessive, and as he was unable to articulate any

568

MIRABEAU'S FUNERAL.

longer, he wrote the word "Sleep ;" and, desirous of abridging this useless agony, he asked for opium, and expired about half-past eight, after having just turned round and raised his eyes to heaven. The plaster that has taken the impression of his countenance thus fixed, exhibits only a sweet smile, a calm sleep, and pleasant dreams.

The grief inspired by his death, was intense and universal. His secretary, who adored him, and had several times drawn his sword in his defence, endeavoured to commit suicide. During his illness, a young man had presented himself, asking whether they would try a transfusion of blood, and offering his own to reanimate and revive Mirabeau. The people caused the theatres to be shut, and even dispersed and hooted a ball, which seemed an insult to the general grief.

Meanwhile, the body was opened. Sinister reports were in circulation; and any inconsiderate word that had confirmed the idea of poisoning, might have cost the lives of persons who, perhaps, were innocent. Mirabeau's son assures us that the greater part of the surgeons who performed the autopsy, "found indubitable traces of poison;" but that they prudently remained silent.

On the 3rd of April, the department of Paris went to the National Assembly, and demanded and obtained that the church of Sainte-Geneviève should be consecrated to the burial of great men, and that Mirabeau should be placed there the first. The front of the edifice was to be inscribed with these words: "Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante." Descartes was there; and Voltaire and Rousseau were also to be brought thither. This, says Camille Desmoulins, was a grand decree! There are a thousand sects and a thousand churches among nations; and in one nation, the holy of holies for one is an abomination for another. But for this temple and these relics, there will be no disputes. This basilic will unite all men to its religion.

On the 4th of April, took place the funeral procession, the most extensive and popular that had ever been in the world, before that of Napoleon on the 15th of December, 1840. The people alone managed the police, and admirably; and no accident happened in that crowd of three or four hundred thousand men. The streets, boulevards, windows, roofs, and trees, were all loaded with spectators.

At the head of the procession, walked Lafayette; next, surrounded by the twelve huissiers à la chaine, came Tronchet, the president of the National Assembly; and, after him, the whole Assembly, without any distinction of party. Sièyes, Mirabeau's intimate friend, who detested the Lameths, and never spoke to them, had nevertheless the noble and delicate idea of taking the arm of Charles de Lameth, thus sheltering them from the unjust suspicion that was impending.

Immediately after the National Assembly marched, in a dense mass, the Club of the Jacobins, like a second Assembly, before all the authorities. They had distinguished themselves by a pompous display of grief, ordering mourning for eight days, and an eternal mourning to be repeated on every anniversary.

This immense procession could not arrive at the Church Saint-Eustache before eight o'clock, where Cérutti pronounced the funeral oration. Twenty thousand National Guards discharged their arms at once, and

DESMOULIN'S VARYING JUDGMENT OF HIM.

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all the windows were shattered to atoms; for a moment people thought that the church would fall in upon the coffin.

Then the funeral procession resumed its course by torch-light,—a truly funeral procession at such an hour. Two powerful instruments were then heard for the first time, the trombone and the tamtam. "Those violent and detached notes overawed the soul and affected the heart." It was very late at night when they arrived at Sainte-Geneviève.

The character of the day had been generally calm and solemn, and stamped with a feeling of immortality. One would have thought that they were transferring the ashes of Voltaire,-of one of those men who never die. But, in proportion as daylight disappeared, and the procession buried itself in the doubly obscure shadow of night, and gloomy streets, lit by the glare of flickering torches, the imaginations of men also plunged irresistibly into the dark regions of futurity and ominous presentiment. The death of the only great man occasioned, from that day, a formidable equality among all others. The Revolution was, from that time, about to roll down a rapid declivity, by a dusky path to triumph, or to the tomb. And, in that path, it was evermore to be without a man, a glorious companion on the road,-a man of a noble heart, after all, devoid of bitterness, and hatred, and magnanimous towards his most bitter enemies. He carried with him to the grave something that was not yet well known, and which was known but too late a spirit of peace even in war,-kindness, gentleness, and humanity even in violence.

:

Let us not yet leave Mirabeau to sleep in the earth; what we have seen buried at Sainte-Geneviève is the least part of him. His soul and his memory still remain, and ought to give an account to God and men.

One man alone, the honest and austere Pétion, refused to take a part in the procession: he asserted that he had read a plan of conspiracy in Mirabeau's own hand-writing.

The great writer of the time, a young, artless, and fervent mind, who represents its passions and fluctuations the best,-I mean Desmoulins,varies astonishingly, in a few days, in his judgment on Mirabeau, and ultimately inflicts upon him the most overwhelming sentence. No spectacle can be more curious than that of this athletic swimmer, tempest-tost, as it were, from hatred to friendship, and at length stranded upon hatred. First, as soon as ever he knows he is ill, he feels affected, and, though still attacking him, he displays the goodness of his heart, and recalls to mind the immortal services that Mirabeau had rendered to liberty: "All patriots say, like Darius in Herodotus: Histiæus excited Ionia against me; but Histiæus saved me when he broke down the bridge over the Ister." And a few pages further:

"But Mirabeau is dying, Mirabeau is dead! What an immense prey has just been seized by death! I feel even now the same shock of ideas and sentiments that made me remain speechless and motionless before that head so full of systems, when, at my request, they raised the veil that covered it, and I still sought to discover his secret. It was a deep sleep; and what struck me, beyond all expression, was that it reminded me of the serenity of the wise and righteous. Never shall I forget that death-struck countenance, and the agonising sentiments I experienced on beholding it."

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MIRABEAU'S REAL TRANSGRESSION.

A week afterwards, a total change takes place! and Desmoulins becomes his enemy! The necessity of dispelling the horrible suspicions which beset the Lameths cast the fickle writer into the most violent language. Friendship induced him to betray friendship! . . . Sublime but childish and immoderate genius, ever rushing into extremes !

"For my part, when they had raised the shroud for me, I confess that, at the sight of a man whom I had adored, I could not shed a tear, and that I gazed upon him with eyes as dry as Cicero's when he contemplated the twenty-three wounds on the dead body of Cæsar. I gazed at that grand treasury of ideas, dismantled by death. I suffered as not being able to shed tears over a man who had so great a genius, who had rendered such splendid services to his country, and had wished to have me for his friend. I thought of the reply that Mirabeau dying made to the dying Socrates, of his refutation of the long conversation of Socrates on immortality, by the single word Sleep. I contemplated his sleep; and, unable to divest myself of the idea of his great projects against the completion of our liberty, and revolving in my mind the whole of his two last years, the past and the future, and his last saying,-that profession of materialism and atheism,' I also replied by these single words: You die." No, Mirabeau can never die; he will live with Desmoulins. He who invoked the people on the 12th of July, 1789, and he who on the 23rd of June uttered the great language of the people to the old monarchy,—the first orator of the Revolution and its first writer,-will live for ever among posterity, and nothing can separate them.

This man, consecrated by the Revolution, and identified with it, and consequently with ourselves, we cannot degrade without degrading ourselves, without uncrowning France.

Time, which reveals everything, has revealed nothing that really proves the reproach of treason to have been well founded. Mirabeau's real transgression was an error, a serious fatal error, but one that was then shared by all in different degrees. At that time, all men of every party, from Cazalès and Maury down to Robespierre, and even to Marat, believed France to entertain Royalist opinions; all men wanted a king : the number of republicans was truly imperceptible.

Mirabeau believed that it is necessary to have a king invested with power, or no king at all. Experience has decided against intermediary attempts,--spurious constitutions, which, by the paths of deception, lead to hypocritical tyranny.

The means he proposes to the king for recovering his power, is to be more revolutionary than the Assembly itself.

There was no treason; but there was corruption. What kind of corruption? Was it money? It is true Mirabeau appears to have received sums to defray the expense of his immense correspondence with the

*

* However likely Mirabeau and Danton's (venality may appear, we must nevertheless observe that we have no other proofs of it than the testimony of their enemies or political adversaries. No document in their handwriting authorises this accusation. Those found in the iron chest are not by Mirabeau, but by Laporte, the intendant; they give no precise information, and prove only that, at the time of his death, Mirabeau had no fixed salary from

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Departments, a sort of ministry that he was organising at his own house. He makes use of this subtle expression,-this excuse which does not excuse him that he had not been bought, that he was paid, not sold. There was also another kind of corruption, which those who had studied this man will easily understand. His romantic visit to Saint-Cloud, in the month of May, 1790, had transported him with the mad hope of becoming the minister, not of a king, but of a queen, a sort of political husband, as Mazarin had been. This mad expectation became the more indelibly impressed upon his mind, as that single and transitory apparition was a kind of dream that never returned, and which he could never compare seriously with reality. And he treasured up this allusion: he saw the queen, as he wished to see her, a true daughter of Maria-Theresa, violent, but magnanimous and heroic. This error was, moreover, cleverly improved and maintained by M. de Lamarck, who was placed about him day and night,— -a man attached to the queen, and also to Mirabeau,and who, never leaving his side, confirmed in his mind this dream of the queen's genius A queen so handsome, so unfortunate, and so courageous! She was in want of only one thing,-advice, experience, a bold and prudent counsellor, a manly hand to guide her, the potent hand of Mirabeau ! . Such was the true corruption of this man,-a culpable illusion of the heart, full of ambition and pride.

Now, let us assemble a jury of men of irreproachable conduct, such as have a right to judge,-such as feel themselves pure, free from bribery, which is not uncommon, and free from hatred, which is rare (how many Puritans prefer vengeance and bloodshed to money!); and having assembled and questioned them, we imagine that they will not hesitate to come to the same decision as ourselves:

Was there any treachery?—No.

Was there any corruption ?—Yes.

Yes, the defendant is guilty. Accordingly, however painful it may be to say so, he was justly expelled from the Pantheon.

The Constituent Assembly was right in sending thither the intrepid

the Court; that he was negociating with it. Ruhl proved nothing, neither did Chenier; and Mirabeau was condemned by the Convention on mere appearances. Mirabeau's son appears to me to prove satisfactorily that he loft scarcely anything but debts. In order to form a serious appreciation of this character, which was far from being pure, we must not, however, forget that Mirabeau, aiming only at energy and audacity, suffered all his life the ridiculous imputation of being a braggadocio in crime. Camille Desmoulins admirably describes the strange satisfaction which Mirabeau testified, when he said to him, "If the Court has not given you a hundred thousand crowns for your speech of to-day, it is certainly robbing you." He appeared flattered by the figure at which his speech was estimated. And, in the interview that he had with Lafayette and Lameth, in 1789, he said, coolly, "What shall we do with the queen? Must we not kill her?" Lafayette was deceived by his serious tone, and replied in the negative. "You are right," said Mirabeau; "a murdered queen is fit for nothing but to furnish a tiresome tragedy to poor Guibert; but a queen humiliated is a very different thing," &c. (See Lameth, Etienne Dumont, Mirabeau's Memoirs, &c.)