Wilkes promised to return. Paine then obtained permission for him to leave the prison, guaranteeing his return and agreeing to take his place at the guillotine if he failed to do so. Wilkes kept his word. He returned to the prison, drawing from Paine the exclamation, "There is yet English blood in England!" Wilkes had been opposed to Paine both in politics and religion.

Another instance of Paine's noble magnanimity is related by Dr. Conway: "This personage [Captain Grimstone, R. A.], during a dinner party at the Palais Egalité, got into a controversy with Paine, and, forgetting that the English Jove could not in Paris answer argument with thunder, called Paine a traitor to his country and struck him a violent blow. Death was the penalty for striking a deputy and Paine's friends were not unwilling to see the penalty inflicted on this stout young captain who had struck a man of fifty-six. Paine had much trouble in obtaining from Barrere, of the Committee of Public Safety, a passport out of the country for Captain Grimstone, whose traveling expenses were supplied by the man he had struck."

Lady Smith: "If the usual style of gallantry was as clever as your 'New Covenant'

Sir Robert and Lady Smith were Paine's most devoted English friends in Paris. When Paine was languishing in prison Lady Smith wrote him letters of cheer and comfort, signing herself "Little Corner of the World."

Frederick Freeman: "He [Captain Rowland Crocker] had taken the great Napoleon by the hand; he had familiarly known Paine.... He remembered Paine as a well-dressed and most gentlemanly man, of sound and orthodox republican principles, of a good heart, a strong intellect, and a fascinating address."

Among the many calumnies circulated against Paine is the charge that during his later years, after he wrote the "Age of Reason," he was, both in France and in America, a drunkard. This charge is false. Paine was one of the most temperate men of his time. Concerning his use of intoxicants in France his old friend Clio Rickman, who visited him in Paris, who was with him during his last day in that city, and who accompanied him to Havre when he sailed for America, says: "He did not drink spirits, and wine he took moderately; he even objected to any spirits being laid in as a part of his sea-stock."

Hon. E. B. Washburne, who made a thorough investigation of Paine's career in France, bears the following testimony: "A somewhat extended study of the French Revolution during the extraordinary period in which Paine was so intimately connected with it, fails to show anything to the prejudice of his personal or political character."

"Returned to the United States on the invitation of Jefferson in 1802."—Library of World's Best Literature.

Charles T. Sprading: "Jefferson offered him return passage from Europe on a United States man-of-war."

National Intelligencer (Washington, Nov. 10, 1802): "Thomas Paine has arrived in this city and has received a cordial reception from the Whigs of Seventy-six and the Republicans of 1800."