ire 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.

In January last, you might see him as President of the Assembly; 'his
neck wrapt in linen cloths, at the evening session:' there was sick heat
of the blood, alternate darkening and flashing in the eye-sight; he had
to apply leeches, after the morning labour, and preside bandaged. 'At
parting he embraced me,' says Dumont, 'with an emotion I had never seen
in him: "I am dying, my friend; dying as by slow fire; we shall perhaps
not meet again. When I am gone, they will know what the value of me was.
The miseries I have held back will burst from all sides on France."'
(Dumont, p. 267.) Sickness gives louder warning; but cannot be listened
to. On the 27th day of March, proceeding towards the Assembly, he had to
seek rest and help in Friend de Lamarck's, by the road; and lay
there, for an hour, half-fainted, stretched on a sofa. To the Assembly
nevertheless he went, as if in spite of Destiny itself; spoke, loud and
eager, five several times; then quitted the Tribune--for ever. He steps
out, utterly exhausted, into the Tuileries Gardens; many people press
round him, as usual, with applications, memorials; he says to the Friend
who was with him: Take me out of this!

And so, on the last day of March 1791, endless anxious multitudes beset
the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin; incessantly inquiring: within doors
there, in that House numbered in our time '42,' the over wearied giant
has fallen down, to die. (Fils Adoptif, viii. 420-79.) Crowds, of all
parties and kinds; of all ranks from the King to the meanest man! The
King sends publicly