life for twenty-four hours. The tall, the wise, the reverend heads had
been taken off, and now the humbler ones were insecure upon their
shoulders. Fouquier-Tinville had erected a guillotine in his
court-room, to save time and transportation. Newsboys sold about the
streets printed lists of those who were to suffer that day. "_Voici
ceux qui ont gagne a la loterie de la Sainte Guillotine!_" they cried,
with that reckless, mocking, blood-thirsty spirit which is found only
in Frenchmen, or, perhaps, in their fellow-Celts. It seemed to Paine
that Robespierre and the Committee were afraid to leave a man alive. He
expected daily his own summons; but he was overlooked. There was
nothing to be gained by killing him, except the mere pleasure of the
thing.

He ascribed his escape to a severe attack of fever, which kept him out
of sight for a time, and to a clerical error on the part of the
distributing jailer. He wrote this account of it, after his return to
America:--"The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and
one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened
outward and flat against the wall, so that, when it was opened, the
inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut
I had three fellow-prisoners with me,--Joseph Van Huile of Bruges,
Michel and Robin Bastini of Louvain. When persons by scores were to be
taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the
night, and those who performed that office had a private mark by which
they knew what rooms to go to and what number to take. We, as I have
said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us,
with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper
word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against
the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and
the destroying angel passed by it." Paine thought his escape