so; but this official denied that Paine was an American. Morris
inclosed this answer to Paine, who returned a shrewd argument in his
own behalf, and begged Morris to lay the proofs of his citizenship
before the minister. But Morris disliked Paine, and his own position in
France was far from satisfactory. It is probable that he was not very
zealous in the matter, and shortly after Paine's letter all
communication with prisoners was forbidden.

The news of the outer world reached these unfortunates, penned up like
sheep waiting for the butcher, only when the doors of the dungeon
opened to admit a new _fournee_, or batch of victims, as the French
pleasantly called them. They knew then that the revolution had made
another stride forward, and had trodden these down as it moved on.
Paine saw them all--Ronsin, Hebert, Momoro, Chaumette, Clootz, Gobel,
the crazy and the vile, mingled together, the very men he had cursed in
his garden at St. Denis--pass before him like the shadows of a
magic-lantern, entering at one side and gliding out at the other,--to
death. A few days later came Danton, Camille, Desmoulins, and the few
who remained of the moderate party. Paine was standing near the wicket
when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for
the happiness and liberty of your country I have in vain tried to do
for mine. I have been less fortunate, but not more culpable. I am sent
to the scaffold." Turning to his friends.--"_Eh, bien! mes amis, allons
y gaiement._" Happy Frenchmen! What a consolation it was to them to be
thus always able to take an attitude and enact a character! Their
fondness for dramatic display must have served them as a moral
anaesthetic in those scenes of murder, and have deadened their
sensibility to the horrors of their actual condition.

In July, the carnage had reached its height. No man could count upon