"deputation" of the _genre humain_, consisting of an English editor and
some colored persons in fancy dresses, Paine and Paul Jones headed the
American branch of humanity and carried the stars and stripes. Not long
after, Fame appears again marshalling a deputation of English and
Americans, who waited upon the Jacobin Club to fraternize. Suitable
preparations had been made by the club for this solemn occasion. The
three national flags, united, were placed in the hall over the busts of
Dr. Franklin and Dr. Price. Robespierre himself received the generous
strangers; but most of the talking seems to have been done by a fervid
_citoyenne_, who took _la parole_ and kept it. "Let a cry of joy rush
through all Europe and fly to America," said she. "But hark!
Philadelphia and all its countries repeat, like us, _Vive la Liberte!_"
To see a man of Paine's clear sense and simple tastes pleased by such
flummery as this shows us how difficult it is not to be affected by the
spirit of the generation we live with. How could he have supposed that
the new heaven upon earth of his dreams would ever be constructed out
of such pinchbeck materials?

It was now the year 1. of the Republic. The _dix Aout_ was over, the
King a prisoner in the Temple. Lafayette, in his attempt to imitate his
"master," Washington, had succeeded no better than the magician's
apprentice, who knew how to raise the demon, but not how to manage him
when he appeared. He had gone down before the revolution, and was now
_le traitre Lafayette_, a refugee in Austria. Dumouriez commanded on
the north-eastern frontier in his place. France was still shuddering at
the recollection of the prison-massacres of the _Septembriseurs_, and
society, to use the phrase of a modern French revolutionist, was _en
proces de liquidation_.

Paine got on very well, at first. The Convention was impressed with the