Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/107

Rh warning was well-timed, for in Amar's report of October 3, which ordered the prosecution of the Girondins, Paine was mentioned as having been elected by them, and as having disgraced himself by deprecating the execution of Louis XVI. He had had the effrontery, said Amar, to depict the United States, France's natural ally, as full of admiration and gratitude for the tyrant of France.

On the triumph of the Jacobins, Paine discontinued attending the Convention, quietly awaited the impending arrest, and amused himself in the garden and poultry-yard of his house with marbles, battledore, and hopscotch. On Christmas Day, 1793, he was expelled from the Convention as a foreigner; and on New Year's eve was arrested simultaneously with Cloots. An American deputation vainly pleaded for his release, and on his asking for the good offices of the Cordeliers' Club, its only reply was to send him a copy of his speech against the king's execution. Gouverneur Morris, then American ambassador, advised him as the safest course to remain quiet, and Paine appears to have acted on the advice. Morris, however, was mistaken in thinking that he would thus have nothing to fear. Not that there is any truth in Carlyle's story of Paine's cell door flying open, of the turnkey making the fatal chalk mark on the inside, of the door swinging back with the mark inside, and of another turnkey omitting Paine in the batch of