it, now visible, far darting, now labouring in
eclipse, is Mirabeau indomitably struggling to be Cloud-Compeller!--One
can say that, had Mirabeau lived, the History of France and of the World
had been different. Further, that the man would have needed, as few men
ever did, the whole compass of that same 'Art of Daring, Art d'Oser,'
which he so prized; and likewise that he, above all men then
living, would have practised and manifested it. Finally, that some
substantiality, and no empty simulacrum of a formula, would have been
the result realised by him: a result you could have loved, a result
you could have hated; by no likelihood, a result you could only have
rejected with closed lips, and swept into quick forgetfulness for ever.
Had Mirabeau lived one other year!

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 requ