Madame Roland died in November; Paine was imprisoned in December.
Dictionary of Religious Knowledge: "Here [trial of Louis XVI] his honorable moderation won the enmity of Robespierre, who marked him for a victim."
Scheaf's Religious Encyclopedia: "He had the courage to vote against the execution of Louis XVI., and thus incurred the anger of Robespierre, who threw him into prison."
Chambers' Encyclopedia of English Literature: "He offended the Robespierre faction, and in 1794 [December 28, 1793], possibly by the procurement of the American minister, Gouverneur Morris—who disliked the French revolution and the alliance between the new republics—he was imprisoned."
Col. Thomas W. Higginson: "They urged him (he was in personal danger) to go back to America, the country he had served so long. 'Go there,' they said; 'it is your country,' 'No,' he said, 'for the time, this is my country.'... So said Thomas Paine, and the doors of the Bastile closed around him."
Rev. John W. Chadwick: "A prisoner deserted by the young Republic at whose birth he had assisted so efficiently, his life in jeopardy for the humanity of his opinions."
Morning Advertiser (England, Feb. 8, 1794): "His arrest was a species of triumph to all the tyrants on earth. His papers had been examined, and far from finding any dangerous propositions the committee had traced only the characters of that burning zeal for liberty—of that eloquence of nature and philosophy—and of those principles of public morality which had through life procured him the hatred of despots and the love of his fellow citizens."
"His arrest and imprisonment, without charges preferred or even the pretense of crime, were acts of perfidy without a parallel except in the history of the French revolution."—Hon. E. B. Washburne.
Major W. Jackson (and other Americans in Paris): "As a countryman of ours, as a man above all so dear to the Americans; who like ourselves are earnest friends of liberty, we ask you in the name of that goddess cherished by the only two republics of the world, to give back Thomas Paine to his brethren."
Achille Audibert: "A friend of mankind is groaning in chains—Thomas Paine.... But for Robespierre's villainy the friend of man would now be free."