not
deserve the honour, being, like about thirty of his speeches, the work
of a stranger. The presence of Talleyrand, with whom he had
quarrelled, was welcome to Mirabeau, who, though not a believer, did
not wish it to be thought that he had rejected the consolations of
religion. The parish priest came, but, being told of the prelate's
presence, went away; and a report spread that the dying sinner had
received the ministrations of a more spiritual ecclesiastic than the
Bishop of Autun.

Mirabeau never knew how little the royal personages whom he served
esteemed his counsels; and he died believing that he alone could have
saved the monarchy, and that it would perish with him. If he had
lived, he said that he would have given Pitt trouble, for there was a
change in his foreign policy. On January 28 he still spoke of the
eternal fraternity of England; but in March he was ready to call out
the fleet, in the interest of Russia, and was only prevented by the
attack of which he died. Whether he supported England against Spain,
or Russia against England, his support was paid for in gold. To his
confederates, his illness was a season of terror. If an enemy
disguised as a creditor caused seals to be set upon his papers, a
discovery must have ensued that would ruin many reputations and
imperil many lives. He clung to the secret documents on which he
intended that his fame should rest. On the day of his death, when they
were deposited with La Marck, the secretary who had transcribed them
stabbed himself. On the morning of Saturday, April 2, there was no
hope, and Mirabeau asked for opium. He died before the prescription
was made up. Several doctors who made the post-mortem examination
believed that there were marks of poison; but when they were warned
that they would be torn to pieces, and the king also, they held their
peace.

Odious as he was, and foredoomed to fail, he was yet the supreme
figure of the time. Tocqueville, who wrote the best book, or one of
the two best books, on the subject, looking to the permanent result,
describes the Revolution as having continued and completed the work of
the monarchy by intensifying the unity of power. It is more true to
say that the original and essential spirit of the movement was
decentralisation--to take away from the executive government, and to
give to local authorities. The executive could not govern, because it
was obliged to transmit orders to agents not its own, whom it neither