1The changes made by death excepted, there is this strange and touching peculiarity of country life, that, whilst kingdoms are rent, hedgerows, and fields, and rustics, apparently remain ever the same.

2Nearly a year had passed since I last set foot in Father Gerbaut’s house, and on entering I found everything the same as when I had last left it; the covers laid in the same places, on the same table, and for the same number of persons. Not only were material affairs the same, but the affections remained unaltered. Sophie had said, “Come, my brother,” and I came. She gave me her hand, and said, “Brother, you are welcome!”

3And yet a great agitation prevailed over the whole surface of France; all the ancient names of the provinces had been changed. France was divided into eighty-three departments. One part of Champagne had taken the names of the Department of the Meuse; the part neighboring was now the Department of the Marne. The little River Biesme, which served as a line of demarcation between Germany and France, and, likewise, between Champagne and Clermontois, fixed the limit of the two departments. Les Islettes, Clermont, and Varennes were in the Department of the Meuse.

4Municipalities were constituted under the name of corporations; M. Gerbaut was nominated municipal councillor, and our neighbor, M. Sauce, grocer, procureur of the corporation.

5I say our neighbor, because the two houses were separated only by a lane.

6The two families frequently visited each other. M. Gerbaut and M. Sauce, with their blushing honors thick upon them, were patriots.

7Madame Sauce was a fine woman, but coarse and vulgar, a veritable dealer in candles, butter, and sugar; rather given to serving short measure, but otherwise incapable of committing a fraud. The mother of M. Sauce, an old lady of sixty-three or sixty-four years, was a Royalist. The children, the eldest of whom was only twelve, were incapable of having an opinion.

8We shall see presently what Sophie’s opinions were.

9Opposite us was the tavern of the “Bras d’Or,” belonging to the brothers Leblanc. Interest made them play a little comedy. As they had the patronage both of the patriotic young men in the town, and the Royalist young nobles from the vicinity, the one brother was a patriot, and the other a Royalist. The elder cried “Vive la nation” with the young tradesmen, while the younger shouted “Vive le Roi” with the noblesse.

10In the midst of all this, a national decree was propagated, which caused some uneasiness in the province.

11It was the civil constitution of the clergy.

12It created an episcopal chair in each department.

13It ordered the election of bishops and priests to be conducted after the fashion of the primitive church: that is to say, that they were to be elected by a majority of votes; all the salaries of the clergy were to be paid from the King’s treasury; perquisites were abolished.

14The clergy were desired to take an oath to maintain that constitution; those who would not, were compelled to resign their benefices in favor of those who would.

15If, after being dismissed, they attempted to renew their functions, they were prosecuted as disturbers of the public peace.

16From this arose the troubles in the Church, and the division between the constitutional priests and those who refused to take the oath.

17If one looks back on that great epoch, and on the two remarkable years of ’89 and ’90, one cannot fail to be astonished. Can any one explain the precautions taken by nature, that the men and the events should arrive at the same time for that awful result which followed?

18In 1762, M. de Choiseul suppressed the order of the Jesuits; that is to say, deprived the Church of its wisest and most powerful supporters.

19Afterwards, in the years ’68, ’69, and ’70, the Revolution produced Chateaubriand, Bonaparte, Hoch, Marceau, Joubert, Cuvier, Saint Martin, Saint Simon, Lesneur, Les Cheniers, Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, Bichat, Lainancourt, all of whom, in 1792, were in the bloom of life and genius.

20Whence came those births sublime and terrible, produced in the space of three or four years? Whence came that burst of genius prepared twenty-four or twenty-five years before to second political eruption? Whence came that body of superior men who closed the eighteenth and opened the nineteenth century? Whence came that phalanx more than human, and who raised the hand to swear to the constitution before the altar of their country?

21Let us forget the death of Mirabeau, the last upholder of the monarchy, whom heaven struck in an unexpected manner, at the moment he forsook the cause of the people; and who, in dying, counselled the flight of the king—a flight which, had it succeeded, would have saved the life of his Majesty; but successful or unsuccessful, must inevitably have brought the monarchy to the ground.

22All knew not the cause of that reason or corruption on the part of Mirabeau; whether it was that his aristocratic instincts, kept under for a time by his father’s severity, had sprung into light on contact with royalty, or not, seemed to be doubtful.

23The Queen was a great enchantress. She was a Circe, fatal to those who stopped not their ears, to avoid listening to the blandishments of her sweet voice. She had the fatal gift, which Mary Stuart possessed, of leading all her friends to death.

24The end of Mirabeau was announced in the provinces almost at the same time as his illness.

25It was on the 20th of March that the news of his illness was bruited about in Paris. It appeared that on the 27th, two days previous, being at his house at Argenteuil, he was seized with a violent cholic, accompanied with almost unendurable agony. He sent for his friend and physician, the famous Cabanis, and distinctly refused to see any other. This was wrong, perhaps; a hospital surgeon or a practised physician might have saved him.

26As soon as the news was received, the crowd pressed to the door of the sick man’s house.

27Barnave, his enemy, almost his rival, who would have died, slain by the Queen, for an interview like that which Mirabeau had had with her, came to see him conducting a deputation of Jacobins.

28The priest came, and would not be denied. This was exactly what Mirabeau feared—the influence of priests upon his dying volition.

29They refused admission to the sick man’s chamber, saying that Mirabeau wished only to see his friend M. Talleyrand, to whom, he said, he could confess, without any great fear of virtuous indignation.

30For some months he had been suffering, he believed, from the effects of poison. Administered by whom? He would have been puzzled to tell that himself. All the world, except the parties interested, knew about his interview with the Queen at St. Cloud, in the month of May, 1790. Whether his malady was natural, or the effects of a crime, he took no measures whatever to arrest its progress.

31Vigorous of body, perhaps more vigorous in imagination, he had passed the night of the 15th of March in an orgie, the component parts of which were women and flowers, perhaps the sole two things that he loved. He used money simply to gratify his tastes in those respects.

32On the morning of the 2nd of April, after a night of agony, which inspired the famous prophecy, “I carry with me the mourning of monarchy; its remains will be the prey of factions,”—awakened from the bosom of grief, if one can use the term, by a cannon-shot, he cried.

33He summoned his valet, was shaved, washed, and perfumed all over his body. After his last toilette was completed, opening his window to admit the young April sun, which was brightening the first blossoms on the trees, he murmured, smiling, “Oh, sun, if thou art not God himself, thou art his cousin german!”

34Afterwards, his last insupportable suffering seized him. He could not speak, but snatched a pen, and wrote plainly the one word Dormir—“Sleep.”

35Did he ask for death, like Hamlet, or only for opium to soothe his passage from one world into the other?

36At about half-past eight, he moved, lifted his eyes to heaven, and heaved a sigh. It was his last!

37In the evening, the theatres were closed, as if some great national calamity had occurred.

38The mask was taken from that immobile face; from that powerful head which Camille Desmoulins called a magazine of ideas exploded by death. His placid brow expressed the serenity of his soul, and his face bore no trace of either grief or remorse.

39There is no doubt but that Mirabeau, when he promised the Queen all his support, fully intended to keep that promise, not only as a gentleman but as a citizen.

40The funeral ceremony took place on the 4th of April; four hundred thousand persons followed in the procession. Two instruments were heard for the first time on that occasion, filling the breasts of the spectators with their vibrating notes: they were the trombone, and the tom-tom.

41At eight in the evening, he was placed in the temporary tomb provided for him in the Pantheon.

42We say temporary, because his body remained there only three years.

43It was removed at the time when the Convention, having slain the Jacobins, and slain itself, having no more living to slay, determined to dishonor the dead.

44It was ordered that the corpse of Honoré Riquette de Mirabeau, traitor to the people, traitor to his country, and sold to royalty, should be removed from the Pantheon.

45The order was executed, and the corpse of Mirabeau was thrown into the criminals’ cemetery, at Clamart.

46It is there that he now sleeps the sleep of hope, waiting the day when France, an indulgent—nay, let us rather say an impartial mother, will give him, not a Pantheon, but a tomb; not a temple, but a mausoleum.