Poor beings! Conquerors of the world, conquered and broken!

But of the two deaths, how much sadder is that of the artist who was
without a faith, and who had neither strength nor stoicism enough to be
happy without one; who slowly died in that little room in the rue de
Calais amid the distracting noise of an indifferent and even hostile
Paris;[51] who shut himself up in savage silence; who saw no loved face
bending over him in his last moments; who had not the comfort of belief
in his work;[52] who could not think calmly of what he had done, nor
look proudly back over the road he had trodden, nor rest content in the
thought of a life well lived; and who began and closed his _Mémoires_
with Shakespeare's gloomy words, and repeated them when dying:--

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."[53]

[Footnote 51: "I have only blank walls before my windows. On the side of
the street a pug dog has been barking for an hour, a parrot screaming,
and a parroqueet imitating the chirp of sparrows. On the side of the
yard the washerwomen are singing, and another parroqueet cries
incessantly, 'Shoulder arrms!' How long the day is!"

"The maddening noise of carriages shakes the silence of the night. Paris
wet and muddy! Parisian Paris! Now everything is quiet ... she is
sleeping the sleep of the unjust" (Written to Ferrand, _Lettres
intimes_, pp. 269 and 302).]