The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-04-16

| apparent that Mlrabeau was the one man
| who might still control the tempest.
By his birth and antecedents he was al
| lied with the aristocracy. At the begin
| ming he was very far from being radical
| revolutionist as it respected the monarchy.
Perhaps to the day of his death he was
not convinced that the monarchy must go,
or that even the king must go. His attl-
| tude of hostility and implacable battle
| with the ruling powers of France had been
the result of the disparagement to which
he had been subjected by his own order,
the nobility. But meanwhile broader dem
ocratic principles had taken possession OF
his mind. He had become profoundly SYM
pathetic with the Third Estate, and was
ready to declare with the most pronounced
radical that the French nation consisted
of the Third Estate without the nobility
or the clergy"
In this complexity of forces, putting
back one party with one hand and the
other with the other, he went forward like
Samson, pulling up the very gate posts or
power and becoming the autocrat OF the
assembly and the people OF France. The
court trembled before him. The clergy
were obsequious. Marie Antoinette, from
hating and deriding him, had sought an
interview, and was considering the ques-
ton of making him minister of state. The
commons looked to him with confidence
and applause. His name echoed around
Europe. When titles were abolished he
still would retain his. He would be called
Mirabeau and not the Citizen Riquetti.
In the assembly he said one day with in
finite sarcasm. 'You have now for three
days set all Europe at cross purposes with
your RiQuctti!"
This tremendous ascendancy over France
and the revolution itself Mirabeau re-
tanned to the day of his death. 1t came to
be believed that the cloud compelling Titan
could really outride the storm, and when
it was known that the storm within him
was about to prevail, that the terrible
surge and swell of his volcanic spirit were
about to break in death, feeling of uni
versal alarm pervaded all circles of society.
His prodigious activities and burning pas
sions had at length conspired to do what
opposition and enmity, the hatred of man
and even the disgust Of nature, had been
unable to accomplish. He continued in the
presidency of the assembly for two months,
but in the last days of March, 1871, it be-
came evident that the end was at hand
DuU tIc pIOOiSy w DIS StCeitCSe az VIC idSO.
On the 9th of the month Mirabeau, on his
way to the assembly hall, tainted and fell by
the road. Meanwhile, though he presently
recovered himself and went to his place,
flashes of fire-strange visionary CLEANS OF
things unseen to natural vision-began to
dart before his eyes, and the roar of the
blood river rose ever higher in his brain,
like the surge of an ocean He seemed to
be burning Up in the flames. His speech
became wild and not wholly of earth.
Phantasmal specters entered his room and
sat about his bed. His thoughts shot like
meteors across the skies of memory and
Imagination. Gin my heart" said he, 81
carry the death dirge of the French mon
archy; the dead remains of it will now be
the spoil of the factions"
Perceiving that Paris held her breath for
the event of his going forth, and hearing
the cannon boom outside, he said, els the
funeral of Achilles prepared already"
Self conscious and proud he was in the last
hour His faculties lost nothing of their
brilliancy. In the early dawn of April 2
he reused himself from his sufferings and