He lived for three months after saying these words, and lived still to triumph, and to add to his glory. The last scene of moment in which he displayed his mighty influence was during the discussion of the law against emigration. Mirabeau opposed it as tyrannical and unjust: the popular voice went the other way, and cries were uttered against him. His thunder silenced their more feeble demonstrations. "The popularity," he exclaimed, "which I desired is but a feeble reed; but I will force it into the earth, and it shall take root in the soil of reason and justice!" Applause followed this burst. "I swear," he continued, "if a law of emigration passes, I swear to disobey you." He descended from the tribune, having silenced his enemies, and astonished the assembly. The discussion went on, and the adjournment was moved, to give time to prepare a law different from the one under discussion, and so to calm the people. The tumult continued, and cries of applause or disapprobation drowned every other sound, till Mirabeau demanded attention. A deputy, M. Goupil, who some time ago had attacked Mirabeau with the cry that Cataline was at their doors, now exclaimed,--"By what right does M. de Mirabeau exercise a dictatorship?" At these words the orator threw himself into the tribune. The president remarked,--"I have not accorded the right to speak; let the assembly decide." The assembly listened.--"I beg my interruptors," said Mirabeau, "to remember that through life I have combated against tyranny, and I will combat it wherever it is to be found." Speaking thus, he turned his eyes from right to left, while applause followed his words;--he continued:--"I beg M. Goupil to remember that not long ago he was mistaken as to the Cataline whose dictatorship he now resists. I beg the assembly to remark that the question of adjournment, simple in appearance, comprehends others, since it supposes that there is a law to form." Murmurs rose from the left; the orator fixed his eyes on the inimical party, and its leaders, Barnave and Lameth. "Silence those thirty voices," he cried: "I am content also to vote for the adjournment, but on condition that no sedition follows." This was the greatest, and it was the last struggle that Mirabeau had with the jacobins,--his last attempt to stop the progress of that revolution to which he had given form and dignity during its primal struggles. "I would not," he wrote, in a letter meant for the eye of the king,--"I would not have laboured only at a vast destruction." Thus pledged by his principles and his promises to the court to prop the monarchy, his task was becoming one that demanded more force than, even giant as he was, he possessed. The shades of death cover the probabilities of the future; but it can scarcely be doubted that he must have modified his views, animated the king to a more resolute and popular course, or been swept away in the torrent of blood so soon about to flow.