“‘I have told you all the facts connected with his illness and his death, and with me you will cease to feel astonishment that the suspicion of such a crime should have gone abroad, when you consider the suddenness of his illness, its short duration, and the dreadful sufferings amid which his life was closed. These must have been terrific; for, about an hour before his death, he turned angrily round to Cabanis, and said, ‘A physician who is a true friend to the patient would not hesitate at giving a dose of opium strong enough to quiet such pain as this for ever.’ And yet, so powerful was the _morale_ of the man, that even when thus writhing in agony, he could not refrain from laughing most heartily at some popular _lazzis_ which were bandying between a screaming _ecaillière_ and the lackey of some person of quality, who were contending for the first hearing of the bulletin of the past night, and which reached his ear through the open window looking on the court-yard below. “‘The public grief at the death of Mirabeau told more for his worth and greatness than whole volumes of written eulogium could now do. Perhaps there never before was an example of a _chef de parti_ having been mourned as sincerely by the adverse party as by his own. The court was in consternation; the queen concealed not her despair, for she foresaw the dread consequence; the last barrier between the furious people and the angry _noblesse_ was down, and the bitter tide would, ere long, rush in through the breach which the falling of this goodly corner-stone had made. I myself was so overcome by regret at the sudden loss which I had sustained, that I retired for some little time to Auteuil, scarcely daring to look at the future, or to speculate for an instant upon what was next to happen.’ “Such,” said C., “is the account given of the death of Mirabeau, by one who was with him from the moment of his first being seized with illness to that when the troublous scene closed for ever. The history contains, perhaps, as fine a moral lesson as ever was preached from pulpit-desk or read in school. “The sentiment which subsisted between Sièyes and the prince was of a different nature. There might have existed, in the origin, some little feeling of jealousy between them; it is certain they never were free from the _esprit de critique_ indicative of rivalry, either secret or avowed. On no one subject did they differ more than on the subject of Mirabeau, Sièyes refusing him the mighty powers that the prince loved to allow him; and I have been witness to long and severe discussions on this one topic alone.