Chapter 2.3.VII.

Death of Mirabeau.

But Mirabeau could not live another year, any more than he could live another thousand years.  Men’s years are numbered, and the tale of Mirabeau’s was now complete.  Important, or unimportant; to be mentioned in World-History for some centuries, or not to be mentioned there beyond a day or two,—­it matters not to peremptory Fate.  From amid the press of ruddy busy Life, the Pale Messenger beckons silently:  wide-spreading interests, projects, salvation of French Monarchies, what thing soever man has on hand, he must suddenly quit it all, and go.  Wert thou saving French Monarchies; wert thou blacking shoes on the Pont Neuf!  The most important of men cannot stay; did the World’s History depend on an hour, that hour is not to be given.  Whereby, indeed, it comes that these same would-have-beens are mostly a vanity; and the World’s History could never in the least be what it would, or might, or should, by any manner of potentiality, but simply and altogether what it is.

The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wasted out the giant oaken strength of Mirabeau.  A fret and fever that keeps heart and brain on fire:  excess of effort, of excitement; excess of all kinds:  labour incessant, almost beyond credibility!  ‘If I had not lived with him,’ says Dumont, ’I should never have known what a man can make of one day; what things may be placed within the interval of twelve hours.  A day for this man was more than a week or a month is for others:  the mass of things he guided on together was prodigious; from the scheming to the executing not a moment lost.’  “Monsieur le Comte,” said his Secretary to him once, “what you require is impossible.”—­“Impossible!” answered he starting from his chair, “Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot, Never name to me that blockhead of a word.” (Dumont, p. 311.) And then the social repasts; the dinner which he gives as Commandant of National Guards, which ‘costs five hundred pounds;’ alas, and ‘the Sirens of the Opera;’ and all the ginger that is hot in the mouth:—­down what a course is this man hurled!  Cannot Mirabeau stop; cannot he fly, and save himself alive?  No!  There is a Nessus’ Shirt on this Hercules; he must storm and burn there, without rest, till he be consumed.  Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure.  Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose.  While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it will be swift death.