a ragged Peasant with
a coffin: "For whom?"--It was for a poor brother slave, whom Majesty had
sometimes noticed slaving in those quarters. "What did he die of?"--"Of
hunger:"--the King gave his steed the spur. (Campan, iii. 39.)

But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own
heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has
found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt
buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here,
here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole
existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a
reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void
Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked
with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there
must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed
thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of
weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too
possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect,--alas, what thing didst
thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously
help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand'
ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to
Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,--crowd round
thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears
and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou
couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of
Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous
Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy
cave;--clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but
Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these
moments for thee.--We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's
death-bed.

And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul. Louis was
a Ruler; but art not thou also one? His wide France, look at it from the
Fixed Stars (themselves not yet Infinitude), is no wider than thy narrow
brickfield, where thou too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully. Man,
'Symbol of Eternity imprisoned into 'Time!' it is not thy works, which
are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than
the least, but only the Spirit thou