Note 143 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
"Mirabeau knew that his end was approaching. 'After my death,' said he, 'the factions will share among themselves the shreds of the monarchy.' He suffered cruelly in the last days of his life; and, when no longer able to speak, wrote to his physician for a dose of opium, in these words of Hamlet, 'to die—to sleep.' He received no consolation from religion."—M. de Staël, vol. i., p. 402.