Reminiscences of Prince Talleyrand, Volume 1 (of 2)

by active 19th century M. Colmache

“‘He rallied again, however, presently, and bade the waiter fetch a coach instantly, saying that he foresaw an attack of spasms in the chest, and that he knew his remedy, which was a hot bath and fumigations as quickly as possible. He requested me alone to accompany him, and from that moment until his death I never left his side. We drove to the public baths on the Boulevard, opposite to the street where Mirabeau then lived, the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. Here his sufferings increased to such a frightful degree that I sent for Cabanis, who, however, did not arrive until the patient had left the bath, after having taken, against my most earnest desire, a large bowl of milk and cocoa, of which he was extremely fond. Strange to say, he was considerably better after this, and left the bath for his own house, on foot. It is this circumstance, I have no doubt, which has given consistency to the belief that he had been poisoned, as it is averred that, had the mess of milk not been absorbed as antidote, Mirabeau must, in the state in which he was at the time, have died immediately on taking it. Such sweeping reasoning as this is of course beneath comment.

“‘It was with some difficulty that he could be prevailed upon to go to bed. He resisted to the last, declaring that the bright morning sun, which by this time was streaming in glory through his windows, would renovate him better than any physician’s advice. Soon after he had lain down, however, a change, from which he never rallied, came over him, and he continued to get worse until he died. It was a dreadful sight to behold his face, all swollen and bloated, and speckled with livid spots, and the white foam which gathered upon his lips as fast as his attendants could wipe it away. It certainly should not have been made a public show, which, before the end of the day, the death-bed of poor Mirabeau had become. Those foul suspicions of treachery and poison had their origin, I doubt not, in the extraordinary symptoms which his disease presented.

“‘Never from the first instant did Mirabeau deceive himself, or shrink from the decree. It has never been my lot to witness a death so dignified, so sublime. In the morning, through the day, surrounded by friends and admirers, all was well; but then came the silent watches of the night, when his whole heart was bared to me, his only comforter. Not once did he swerve, neither did he throw back one single look of regret over the road which he had for so many years been travelling. Quite the contrary;—he met the grim enemy with a courage and equanimity of temper, the gift of a philosophy of the highest order.

“‘If popularity could have satisfied the soul of Mirabeau, he surely must have died content. His house was besieged, and, from the moment he was declared to be in danger, the very street became impassable from the crowd of messengers who thronged his door. High and low, rich and poor, felt alike an interest in the fate of the great man who was to protect them between monarchy and anarchy, which it is certain the mighty intellect of Mirabeau would have made an easy task.

“‘He lingered thus in pain and agony during the whole of this day and night, and died in my arms on the following morning at eight o’clock, having preserved his firmness of intellect until the very last moment. It is true (for there were some absurd stories afloat) that, about five minutes before he actually expired, he wrote on a piece of paper (for speech was already gone) these words: “It is far easier to die than to sleep!” The movement which he made to place the paper in my hand was his last. He never stirred afterwards. I have kept that precious scrap of writing through every change of fortune; and in the hope of keeping it to my dying day, have taken measures to have it preserved when I shall be no more. During his illness, he frequently reverted to the conversation which had passed between us on the bench at the Palais Royal. He told me that he then already knew that his fate was sealed, and dared me to maintain a conviction of the contrary. Throughout my whole life, I have ever resisted superstitious feeling, but there certainly does seem something strange and unaccountable in this gloomy foreboding of Mirabeau, that gives the lie direct to all one’s predetermined disbelief in the doctrine of “presentiments.”

“‘The generation of to-day, contrary to anticipation, has learnt to undervalue Mirabeau; but I think a re-action may come even in your time, because he was not a mere orator, whose fame must die when his powers of speech are gone, but he was also the greatest thinker of his age. How would the face of the country have been changed had he lived but a few months, nay, even a few weeks longer! This has been so strongly felt by all parties, that there were many who blindly rejoiced at his death, even among those who had known and loved him; while those who had most cause to mourn, declared, in their terror, that he must have been poisoned.

“‘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.