“You will scarcely credit the assurance, that not even to this very hour can the prince speak without emotion of the ‘giant Mirabeau.’ I verily believe that this affection has never been supplanted in his bosom. It was not long since he was compelled to break off suddenly, in the midst of an anecdote which he was telling, wherein were mentioned the circumstances of Mirabeau’s death. He became all at once silent, and no one dared request him to renew the thread of his story.” “Did you ever hear him allude to those circumstances on any other occasion?” “Once only,” replied C.; “we were alone together in his study in the Rue St. Florentin, one fine summer’s evening. I had been reading to him some pages of Thiers’s ‘History of the Revolution,’ and had just closed the book, for want of light, at the mention of Petion. “‘That man,’ said the prince, ‘was the greatest scoundrel this country ever produced. Mirabeau, whose greatest defect in political conduct was the extraordinary facility with which he gave himself entirely up to the first person possessed of the slightest show of talent, who could take off his own hands any part of the labour, had grown _entiché_ with Petion. For it was extraordinary that Mirabeau, whose mental vigour could, Atlas-like, have borne the world, was yet possessed of so much physical indolence that he was seldom known to carry out his own gigantic designs. Upon how many occasions, when his burning eloquence, his energy, had roused the angry lion, has he been known to laugh in pity, to see the _meute_ whom his own fiery zeal had urged into hot pursuit, rush madly by, while he himself lay down to rest until some newer game was started. From the moment that such men as Petion, Brissot, and Condorcet, began to surround Mirabeau, and were admitted into his privacy, with Cabanis, whom he had chosen as his medical attendant, I augured ill for the future fate of my friend. Already were Mirabeau’s views and principles grown too tame, too reasonable, for these infuriated demagogues, and they had several times received with ill temper his biting sarcasms at what he called their _exaltation republicaine_. I remember the effect produced upon one occasion at a private meeting of his friends, and the gloom and murmurs of rage with which the concluding words of a speech he had risen to make were received. ‘_Even supposing, my friends, that royalty were now to be abolished, it is not a republic that must be established—we are not yet ripe for this—it must be a commonwealth._’ From that moment, such is my firm belief, his ruin was decided; but whether he really did meet his death by unfair means, or whether it was the consequence, as was proclaimed at the time, of excitement and fever of the blood, brought on by over-exertion and anxiety, none can tell to this hour. The circumstances of his death will certainly justify, both to his friends and to posterity, every suspicion of poison; while, on the other