Citizen Tom Paine (34 page)

M. Merson interrupted, “Please, please, citizens, we are on our way to the Luxembourg jail. I pray you not to argue, for it is unseemly in men going our way.” And they continued on their way, Clootz roaring his theories at the top of his lungs.

It had been the Palace of Luxembourg before the revolution; now it was the house of arrest, the last stop. It stood in the famous old gardens where all was beauty, so that the many who went to the guillotine could bring a good last memory with them, and in no place was horror and warmth so neatly and terribly combined. Great rooms, high ceilings, tugs and tapestries and gilt chairs, and death. If you sat with your friends and mused of things that were far away, large things and beautiful, such as men in prison bring to life with words, the green hills of Pennsylvania, the white cliffs of Dover, the moors of the north country, the Palisades on a cold, windy winter day, a storm at sea or a sunrise at sea; and musing upon those things heard a series of piercing shrieks, moans and groans and fervent calling upon God, you pretended not to notice—for it is saddest of all things to contemplate human beings going to their deaths. But you thought to yourself, the duchess, perhaps—or the wife of the little man who kept a tobacco shop on the Rue St. Denis—or the quiet woman in black who has no identity at all.

You kept your quarters clean even if you had never kept quarters clean before, for you acquired at the threshold of the grave a fastidious sense of delicacy. You acquired humility, whether you were a count or a butcher, for here were all classes living in the most incredible little democracy the world had ever known. When you wept, you tried not to show your tears to others, for early in your stay at the Luxembourg you saw the quiet contagion of tears, twenty persons in a room where one began to weep, and then another, and then another—and then all.

You came to admire the French if you had never admired them before, the way they faced death, the way they could joke about it, the way with a simple, expressive shrug of their shoulders they could divest it of all importance. You found a people from chimney sweep to duke so wonderfully civilized that even while you were dying because a revolution had gone amuck, you never for once doubted that in France was the salvation of mankind. You came to know M. Benoît, the jailor, who would sometimes say, with a deprecatory smile, “I must have a large heart— How do I know, monsieur?—because whenever one of my charges goes away, a part of my heart goes with him. You who are here die once—and how many times do I die? A hundred? A thousand? Why don't I go away, monsieur? Who would replace me? I am not a saint, but not a villain.”

You heard people say, “It is The Terror. It is the war.” Not complainingly, but with an acceptance of the fact that explained a little how this strange, sunny land had once lived through a hundred-year war that had desolated three quarters of it.

You would be with a group, and a door would open, and there would be a new one among you, Benoît leading him in and asking apologetically, “There will be some friends of yours, perhaps? You must make your best, and I will do my part,” and turning around you would recognize him. Others recognize him too, some with bewilderment, some with a trace of satisfaction, but they all greet him as if he were coming to a club and not to a last stopping place.

Your old, good friend has learned that tomorrow it will be his turn, and he asks you to take a walk with him in the garden. Arm in arm, you stroll around the court, around and around, never once mentioning that this is the last walk on the last cold, winter afternoon, and looking at the gray winter sky, you realize the beauty of what was never beautiful before. The snow begins to fall, and your friend lays the palm of his hand against the melting flakes and reminds you that here is a great wonder of existence, so many snowstorms, so many flakes, so many countless millions of them, and yet all different, never two the same. “A wonder of infinity for us who delude ourselves with our greatness.”

Or the mother of the boy, Benjamin, comes to you with word that they are taking him, he who is only seventeen. “A child, a baby, an innocent,” she pleads with you. “Yesterday, I nursed him at my breast, just yesterday. What could he have done to deserve death?”

You don't know, and you try, with the foolish, blundering ways of a man, to comfort the mother. And then you go in to the boy, who, looking at you so trustingly, asks with his eyes for you to clear away the great mystery of death.

And so time passes, and presently there is no world at all except the Luxembourg Prison.

In the beginning, Paine had hope. He did not want to die; no one wants to die, and in this case, Paine had committed no crime, had indulged in no act of treason, and had consistently expressed his faith in both the Republic and the revolution. It was true that he had voted with and consorted with a party now overthrown and discredited, but even in that situation his motives had never been suspect, and he had been deliberately acquitted when the others went to the scaffold. Why then should he be held in prison? Treason? If there were a thousand men who hated Paine, accusing him of almost every crime known to man, they at least left treason out of the roster. In his fidelity to what he believed, he had never faltered.

Nor could he accept his fate with the laughing abandon, shown first by Clootz and later by Danton. Well enough for them to find this whole business of mankind so amusing that death under the guillotine seemed the final jest in a ridiculous comedy. Paine had always loved life; the simple fact of living was an adventure, each new face presented to him an added bit of happiness. He was gregarious to an extreme, not merely loving his fellow men, but feeling a passionate need for them, without which life could not be endured. He had a sense of property which, not fixing itself on some little bit of acreage, had embraced the whole world.

So in the beginning he had hope, and he fought for his freedom. Not only was he a citizen of France; first and foremost, he was a citizen of America; he had weaned a piece of that land, he had nursed it and seen it out of its swaddling clothes. Therefore, he could, without shame or conscience, call on America in this hour of his need.

As simple as that; he got word to his friends, Barlow and a few others, to put pressure on Morris, the ambassador, and have him obtain Paine's release. And it was as simple as that, for the only nation in all the world revolutionary France could look to for friendship was America.

It was a situation to delight Morris's heart. There was a time in Philadelphia when the people rose up against a small group that would have turned the American revolution to their own ends; and the leader of the people was Paine, and one of the small group was Gouverneur Morris. There was a time when a revolutionary tribunal was set up in Philadelphia, and one of those who sat in the tribunal was Tom Paine, and one of those it passed judgment upon was Gouverneur Morris. “So slowly do the wheels of fate turn,” Morris mused, “but so aptly.” How many years had he waited for this moment—twelve? thirteen? A man forgets the years, but some things a man does not forget. In this land of shopkeepers and pigs, Paine and Clootz had walked to jail through the streets of Paris, arguing aloud their respective modes of atheism; yes, Morris had heard of that. What a glorious opportunity when a man can avenge his own feud and serve God at the same time. As brief insurance, Morris wrote to Jefferson, who represented all that was left in America of the revolution, the people and the ideals which made it:

“… I must mention, that Thomas Paine is in prison, where he amuses himself with publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ. I do not recollect whether I mentioned to you, that he would have been executed along with the rest of the Brissotines, if the adverse party had not viewed him with contempt. I incline to think that, if he is quiet in prison, he may have the good luck to be forgotten. Whereas, should he be brought much into notice, the long suspended ax might fall on him. I believe he thinks, that I ought to claim him as an American citizen; but, considering his birth, his naturalization in this country, and the place he filled, I doubt much the right, and I am sure that the claim would be, for the present at least, inexpedient and ineffectual.…”

That done, Morris proceeded, with a clear conscience, to serve both his God and his country. The first step was to have Paine guillotined, which would be a service to the Almighty, and the second to break relations with France for that very thing, which would turn the service of the Almighty to the ends of the Hamiltonian party in America. To Barlow, Morris said:

“Paine is out of my hands entirely, a citizen of France, you know.”

“But a citizen of America first!”

“I prefer to believe that Americans are not his ilk. I prefer to cherish some small respect for my native land.…”

And to Robespierre, “Really, sir, I would not stand in your way if Paine's execution were necessary to the welfare of the French Republic.”

“And you might not be displeased,” Robespierre said keenly.

“One doesn't commit oneself on such matters.”

“Yet if Paine goes to the guillotine,” Robespierre speculated, measuring Morris with his small, bright, merciless eyes, “there might be some displeasure in certain sections of your land. The militia, for instance, who fought with Paine, might remember him and object to his death; and Jefferson might remember that Paine once wrote a book called
Common Sense
.”

“I assure you, sir, that neither the militia of a war that was over ten years ago nor Thomas Jefferson exerts too much influence upon the foreign policy of President Washington's government.”

“Yet even your President Washington, if he needed a reason—speaking purely theoretically, you understand—might recall that once he and Paine were comrades in arms and, recalling that, might play upon the sympathies of the American people—”

“If you insinuate—”

“I insinuate nothing,” Robespierre said quietly. “It is Monsieur the American ambassador who insinuates. Meanwhile the good Lady Guillotine drinks enough. When Paine's time comes, he will taste the justice of France, and until then Monsieur the American ambassador must wait patiently. Monsieur the American ambassador must not expect the French Republic to use its tribunals for personal—”

“That is enough, sir,” Morris said.

Yet all in all, he was content to wait. He had waited a long time, and what were a few weeks or months more?

To Paine, none of this was apparent, as in the Luxembourg weeks stretched into months. He heard of a petition on his behalf put forward in the Convention by Americans living in Paris, and he heard of the sneering reply the aging president of the Convention made. He heard of a correspondence between the French foreign minister and Morris, and he took it in good faith. True enough, Morris did not like him, but one does not send a man one dislikes to his death. As time went on and absolutely nothing was done about his imprisonment, Paine's hope ebbed, but it never entirely vanished.

The Terror became more terrible, and the flow of victims to the guillotine was speeded up. A dread silence settled over the Luxembourg, a tightening of restrictions, a severing of all bonds with the outside world. Weeks and months passed, and no man left the place except for a single reason.

It came time for Clootz to go, and he waved to Paine and laughed, “Now, my deistic friend, I shall see which of us is right on this question of God, while you sit here and rack your poor brains.”

And Danton, going the same way to the same bloody blade, shook hands with Paine, smiling rather sadly, and murmuring, “What a foolish, foolish world, fit only for children and idiots!”

And Luzon said, softly, fervently, “Good-by, my friend Paine. You shall not want for comrades, if they have republics over there.”

And Ronsin said, “You will be lonely, Paine. The whole world we knew has already passed.”

Twenty one night, forty the next, over two hundred one terrible time. The gentle Benoît was no longer jailer; a hulking, sadistic brute called Guiard became custodian of the old palace; he closed off the courtyard and denied the prisoners a little air and a little sky before they met their deaths. He told them:

“Speak, and you are overheard. Plot, and I know what you are plotting. Guiard never sleeps.”

In a fashion, it was true; he had the place filled with his spies, and a word was enough to send a man to the guillotine.

In this hellishness, Paine became something more than a man; he became a spirit and a faith; he became consolation and redemption. He knew when to smile—and a smile was the only thing on earth these poor devils could be given. He knew the few words that could help a man go to his death; he knew a phrase to console a mother. He was tireless, without fear, without hesitation. Gaunt, his health failing, nevertheless the mere sight of his big, angular figure entering a room was enough to cheer the occupants. “It is Monsieur Paine—come in, come in.” He had a vast fund of stories, the drawling, American frontier jokes, which translated into his very bad French made almost no sense at all, but which were funny and pointless enough to send the poor devils who heard them into aching laughter. And he knew when to call up mirth; he knew when to be silent, when his mere presence was enough, when a word was enough.

And man after man, woman after woman, going to meet their death, said, “Send for Citizen Paine.”

He lay in his bare room; he waxed hot and cold with fever; time lost meaning for him and disappeared. The fever came and receded, like undulating waves of fire, and he lived in a nightmarish world, populated by saints and devils. Vaguely he sensed that men were entering and leaving; screams sometimes made him wonder where he was, and in a moment of clarity, he heard a man say:

“This wretch is dying.”

And it mattered little or not at all, for the fever always returned, burning him, chilling him, burning him again.

Then, after a long, long time, sanity returned. He asked what month it was.