But death did not permit him to enjoy the fruits of his treason. On the 2nd of April, 1791, he died. Some hours before his death he heard the boom of cannon, and said, in his gigantic self-conceit, "Do they already sound the knell of Achilles?" His last words, in which his treason stands revealed, were: "I am in mourning for the monarchy; its remains will be the prey of the malcontents."
The people, trusting and credulous, and ignorant as yet of the renegading of their tribune, learned of his death with profound consternation. I traveled over Paris that day. Everywhere the mourning was deep. One would have thought a public calamity had fallen upon France; people accosted one another with the words, impressed with mournful despair: "Mirabeau is dead!" Tears flowed from all eyes. The weeping multitude religiously followed the ashes of the great orator, which were deposited in the Pantheon. Nevertheless two voices, two prophetic voices, rose alone above this concert of civic commiseration, protesting against the pious homage rendered to the memory of a traitor.
"As for me," wrote Camille Desmoulins in his journal, "when they raised the mortuary cloth that covered the body of Mirabeau, and I saw the man I had idolized, I vow I felt not a tear—I looked at him with an eye as dry as Cicero's regarding the body of Caesar pierced with twenty-three dagger-thrusts. It was the remains of a traitor."
And Marat, guided by a sort of intuition, wrote in The Friend of the People the day after Mirabeau's funeral: "Give thanks to the gods, people! Your most redoubtable enemy is no more! He died the victim of his many treasons, by the farsighted barbarism of his accomplices.[9] The life of Mirabeau was stained with crimes. May a veil forever hide that hideous picture. Mirabeau in the Pantheon! What man of integrity would desire to repose beside him? The ashes of Rousseau, of Montesquieu, would shudder to find themselves in company with the traitor! Ah, if ever liberty is established in France, if ever some legislator, according to what I may have done for the country, should attempt to decree me the honors of the Pantheon, I here vigorously protest against the black affront! Rather would I never die! Curses on the name of Mirabeau."
Strange prophecy! Mirabeau's secret papers, discovered on August 10, 1792, in the King's secret Iron Cupboard in the Tuileries, laid bare irrefutable proofs of his treason, and the National Convention on November 27 of the following year, issued the following memorable order:[10]
"The National Convention, considering that there is no greatness in man without honor, decrees that the body of Honoré Gabriel Riquetti Mirabeau be withdrawn from the Pantheon. The body of Marat shall be transferred thither."
Ah, sons of Joel! Never forget those sacred words, There is no greatness in man without honor. For none was ever more exalted in genius than Mirabeau! And nevertheless, the National Assembly, responsive to a sentiment of justice and impartiality that reflects honor on it, expelled from the Pantheon the body of the man of genius, of the grand orator, of the fiery tribune who sold himself to the court, and replaced it by that of Marat, the humble journalist, the man of probity and disinterestedness, the friend of the people, the incorruptible citizen.
The death of Mirabeau disconcerted the court of Louis XVI, and shattered its hope of dominating, disarming, and vanquishing the Revolution by means of the National Assembly; the court then resolved to execute a project it had long been revolving, and had already vainly attempted at Versailles, on the days of the 5th and 6th of October. That project was:
"The King shall fly to some fortified place on the frontiers. There, surrounded by devoted troops under the command of a royalist general (the Marquis of Bouillé), Louis XVI shall protest solemnly to all Europe against the usurpatory acts of the National Assembly, shall strongly invoke against the French Revolution the spirit of solidarity which ought to bind all sovereigns, and stamp out the revolt under the heel of the foreign armies."
This criminal project Louis XVI was on the point of carrying out. But Marat, always watchful, always prophetic, had, several days before the flight of the King, denounced the fact in these terms in The Friend of the People (June 16, 1791):