In each of these papers a plea for the imperilled Girondins is audible. Each is a reminder that he, Thomas Paine, friend of the Brissotins, is continuing their anxious and loyal vigilance for the Republic. And during all this summer Paine had good reason to believe that his friends were safe. Robespierre was eloquently deprecating useless effusion of blood. As for Paine himself, he was not only consulted on public questions, but trusted in practical affairs. He was still able to help Americans and Englishmen who invoked his aid. Writing to Lady Smith concerning two applications of that kind, he says:
"I went into my chamber to write and sign a certificate for them, which I intended to take to the guard house to obtain their release. Just as I had finished it, a man came into my room, dressed in the Parisian uniform of a captain, and spoke to me in good English, and with a good address. He told me that two young men, Englishmen, were arrested and detained in the guard house, and that the section (meaning those who represented and acted for the section) had sent him to ask me if I knew them, in which case they would be liberated. This matter being soon settled between us, he talked to me about the Revolution, and something about the 'Rights of Man,' which he had read in English; and at parting offered me, in a polite and civil manner, his services. And who do you think the man was who offered me his services? It was no other than the public executioner, Samson, who guillotined the King and all who were guillotined in Paris, and who lived in the same street with me."
There appeared no reason to suppose this a domiciliary visit, or that it had any relation to anything except the two Englishmen. Samson was not a detective. It soon turned out, however, that there was a serpent creeping into Paine's little garden in the Faubourg St Denis. He and his guests knew it not, however, until all their hopes fell with the leaves and blossoms amid which they had passed a summer to which Paine, from his prison, looked back with fond recollection.
"He suffered under Pontius Pilate." Pilate's gallant struggle to save Jesus from lynchers survives in no kindly memorial save among the peasants of Oberammergau. It is said that the impression once made in England by the Miracle Play has left its relic in the miserable puppet-play Punch and Judy (_Pontius cum Judis_); but meanwhile the Church repeats, throughout Christendom, "He suffered under Pontius Pilatè." It is almost normal in history that the brand of infamy falls on the wrong man. This is the penalty of personal eminence, and especially of eloquence. In the opening years of the French Revolution the two men in Europe who seemed omnipotent were Pitt and Robespierre. By reason of their eloquence, their ingenious defences, their fame, the columns of credit and discredit were begun in their names, and have so continued. English liberalism, remembering the imprisoned and flying writers, still repeats, "They suffered under William Pitt." French republics transmit their legend of Condorcet, Camille Desmoulins, Brissot, Malesherbes, "They suffered under Robespierre." The friends, disciples, biographers, of Thomas Paine have it in their creed that he suffered under both Pitt and Robespierre, It is certain that neither Pitt nor Robespierre was so strong as he appeared. Their hands cannot be cleansed, but they are historic scapegoats of innumerable sins they never committed.