"Go away! Shut the door!"
I said to him one day:
"You will live for the good of religion."
"Ah, yes," he replied, "it would certainly be for God; but He does not wish it, and I shall die within these few days."
Falling back into his chair, and drawing his night-cap over his ears, he expiated his former pride by his present resignation and humility.
At a dinner at Migneret's, I had heard him speak of himself with the greatest modesty, declaring that he had done nothing out of the common, but that he believed that art and the language had not degenerated in his hands.
M. de La Harpe quitted this life on the 11th of February 1803; the author of the Saisons died almost at the same time, fortified with all the consolations of philosophy, as M. de La Harpe died fortified with all the consolations of religion: the one was visited by men, the other by God.
M. de La Harpe was buried on the 12th of February 1803 in the cemetery at the Barrière de Vaugirard. The coffin was placed beside the grave on the little mound of earth that was soon to cover it, and M. de Fontanes delivered a funeral oration. It was a dismal scene: whirling snow-flakes fell from the clouds and covered the pall with white, while the wind blew it upwards, to allow the last words of friendship to reach the ears of death. The cemetery has been destroyed and M. de La Harpe disinterred: there was hardly anything left of his poor ashes. M. de La Harpe had been married under the Directory, and had not been happy with his beautiful wife; she had been seized with loathing at the sight of him, and had persisted in refusing him any of his rights[525].
For the rest, M. de La Harpe, like everything else, had diminished by the side of the Revolution, which was ever growing in dimensions: reputations hastily shrank away before the representative of that Revolution, even as dangers lost their power before him.
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