all respect for the man and for the office. None so base as to call him
King. He was only the _pouvoir executif_, or more commonly still,
_Monsieur Veto_. Achille Duchatelet, a young officer who had served in
America, called upon Dumont to get him to translate a proclamation
drawn up by Paine, urging the people to seize the opportunity and
establish a republic. It was intended to be a "Common Sense" for
France. Dumont refusing to have anything to do with it, some other
translator was found. It appeared on the walls of the capital with
Duchatelet's name affixed. The placard was torn down by order of the
Assembly and attracted little attention. The French were not quite
ready for the republic, although gradually approaching it. They seemed
to take a pleasure in playing awhile with royalty before exterminating
it.

The Abbe Sieyes was a warm monarchist. He wrote in the "Moniteur," that
he could prove, "on every hypothesis," that men were more free in a
monarchy than in a republic. Paine gave notice in Brissot's paper, that
he would demolish the Abbe utterly in fifty pages, and show the world
that a constitutional monarchy was a nullity,--concluding with the
usual flourish about "weeping for the miseries of humanity," "hell of
despotism," etc., etc., the fashionable doxology of patriotic authors
in that day. Sieyes announced his readiness to meet the great Paine in
conflict. This passage of pens was interrupted by the publication of
Part Second of the "Rights of Man." Before Paine returned to Paris, the
mob had settled the question for the time, so far as the French nation
were concerned.

Paine had also taken a leading part in some of the politico-theatrical
entertainments then so frequent in the streets of Paris. At the
festival of the Federation, in July, 1790, when Clootz led a