A Sharpness on the Neck

Five minutes later, when he and his disconsolate companion were back outside, Philip was muttering between clenched teeth: 'I wanted to hit that man. I very nearly did.'

Melanie, the tough young woman, had come near fainting at the news so brutally delivered, and Philip had to support her to the door. Her father's body—in two pieces—would now be in one of those anonymous mass graves inside the cemetery of the Church of the Madeleine…

Radcliffe embraced her like a brother, did what he could to comfort her. 'The scoundrels! I am so sorry…' People walking in the street turned their heads toward him when his words fell clearly in the air. Well, he didn't care.

In an effort to divert her even slightly from the raw fact of death, he commented: 'And so that is the famous Robespierre. He seems to make no effort to avoid dressing like an aristocrat… or behaving like one, either. I had no idea you knew the man.'

'I have been present at a dinner or two where he was entertained, that's all.' Melanie wiped her eyes. 'But I don't suppose it would make any difference if I, or my father, had saved his life. Oh, Philip, it is horrible to think… of the grave.'

'Of course it is.'

'You will tell me my father died by accident? That someone was in a hurry and made a mistake?'

'No, I won't try to tell you that. Mistake or not, it's a damned outrage!'

'But one must go on.' She wiped her eyes. 'It is necessary to live for…' Her words trailed away.

'Yes, there will be a future for you someday. And for France. What will you do now? And what about your cousin here in Paris? Are there any other relatives?'

'My cousin, yes,' she murmured in a dazed voice. 'Marie Grosholtz.'

'I wonder if she has heard the news?'

Melanie made an effort to pull herself together. 'Yes, I had better go and see my cousin.'

'I'll come with you.'

'No! That is, I think it will be better if you don't come just now. Besides, you still have important business that you must be about.'

'You will be all right?'

'Yes!' And it seemed that, with a great effort, she had pulled herself together. She sounded almost normal. 'I am sure.'

The comment about his business was true enough. His meeting with Paine could be of some importance, and ought not to be postponed, even though Radcliffe had arrived too late to exert any influence on behalf of the Remain family.

Radcliffe reluctantly agreed to the temporary separation. But he insisted on arranging a rendezvous with Melanie, at the address she had already given him.

'Yes. Very well. We will meet there, and we will have… things to talk about, you and I. That is where my cousin is employed. Even if I should not be there, the people at that house will know where to reach me.'

After being passed from one government official to another, most of whose names and functions he failed to remember, Philip told the last committee that he saw (whose title he never quite managed to find out) that, since housing seemed so difficult to obtain, he would appeal to his old acquaintance Thomas Paine, where he could be sure to obtain lodging for a few days at least. That seemed to solve the problem. Meanwhile, Old Jules had kept tagging along with Philip. The old man was carrying his own identification paper, provided by the Committee of his own district, but he might as well have left it at home. With an American to question, a new set of foreign opinions to be sounded, none of the authorities seemed much interested in one more aged provincial.

Having given up on housing for the moment, Radcliffe set out to locate Tom Paine.

Again and again, as he sought to find his way to Paine's lodgings, Radcliffe's papers were checked by heavily armed and mustached men in workingmen's coats, with tricolor cockades on their red caps, who looked at the documents, and at him, suspiciously. He thought several of them were probably unable to read.

In fluent French he declaimed, so often that it began to seem like part of a ritual: 'As an American, I am fully in sympathy with your wish to be rid of kings and queens.'

Absent this almost regular interference, Paine would not have been hard to find. He was at his house.

Paine during much of his stay in Paris occupied a rented mansion at No. 63, Rue de Faubourg St. Denis. While still technically within the city, the area had a rural character, and seemed far removed from Parisian street life.

The house was separated from the street by walls and gates, and, isolated in a grove of maple trees, reminded Radcliffe of a farmhouse. Indeed the courtyard was like a farmyard, with geese and chickens scratching and waddling about.

Paine was a red-nosed man in his late fifties, a couple of inches under six feet tall, very nearly Philip's own height. When Philip caught up with him, standing in his courtyard, feeding his domestic fowl with handfuls of grain, Paine was dressed like many of the other Revolutionary officials Radcliffe had seen thus far in France: a blue coat over a red waistcoat, long hair pulled back and tied without wig or powder. And of course the ubiquitous tricolor cockade.

'I thought perhaps that I would find you at the Convention, sir,' Radcliffe said in English. 'Are you still a member?'

'Only nominally, I am afraid. I go but little to the Convention, and then only to make my appearance; because I find it impossible to join in their tremendous decrees, and useless and dangerous to oppose them.'

The older American, having observed over a period of months and years how the situation was deteriorating, said he was half-expecting to be taken into custody himself at any time.

'Really, sir!'

Paine's smile was wan. 'Really.'

Not knowing how to respond to that, Philip got out his oilskin packet and handed over the confidential letter he was carrying.

Philip hadn't seen the letter open until now, and had only a general idea of its contents. Paine now enlightened him by reading the last part of the message aloud:

… your presence on this side of the ocean may remind Congress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one, who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who, with much pleasure, subscribes himself,

Your sincere friend, G. Washington

'That is very welcome,' Paine mused aloud, refolding the paper. 'It seems that I—'

And then he suddenly fell silent.

An armed party of soldiers had appeared.

Their sergeant approached, grim-faced. 'Philip Radcliffe?'

'Yes.' But this is some mistake…

In the name of the people, you are under arrest.'

Philip was stunned. When a pair of men moved to seize his arms he fought back instinctively. Before the brief struggle was over, one of the soldiers had a bleeding lip, and the American had suffered a slight wound on the crown of his head. Meanwhile the voice of Thomas Paine was raised in crude and clumsy French, arguing with the soldiers to no purpose.

Blood trickling down his face, Radcliffe said: 'If my father was living here, now, no doubt the Committee would find him dangerous too.'

He was a block away from the gate of Paine's house, being marched along the street with arms bound behind him, before it crossed his mind to wonder what had happened to Old Jules. Certainly the old man was nowhere in sight now.

By the time I reached Paris again, I had more or less fully recovered my strength. Once more I was actively in pursuit of my brother, and I had in mind several refinements on the last cycle of punishment to which I had subjected him.

Meanwhile, Philip Radcliffe was not far from my thoughts. Given the young man's impulsive disposition, and the strange environment of Revolutionary Paris that he was about to enter, I thought it doubtful that he would be able to stay out of trouble very long.