Citizen Tom Paine (36 page)

No, he had never lost faith; he had not abandoned democracy, it had abandoned him—the Thermidors, then the Directory, the whole gradual and complete collapse of the revolution.

He began to run down like a watch; he stopped functioning in the only way he was fitted to function, as a revolutionist. Nothing but that could have made him so feeble and purposeless, not the hatred stirred up by
The Age of Reason
, not his sickness, not the silence of his old comrades in America, but simply the fact that he had ceased to fulfill his purpose.

He wrote a little; he was a writer and until he died, he would fumble with a pen. He remembered old Ben Franklin who had been a philosopher and a scientist until the day of his death, and Paine thought he too would dabble with philosophy and science, little machines, models, gadgets that were ingenious enough but meant nothing more than the chattering of a voice that had once roared out firm and strong, and since the voice could not be completely silenced it took these small, futile directions.

And thereby, he went to pieces. Forgotten—a new age was dawning, the nineteenth century. Had a fool once said, “Give me seven years and I will write a
Common Sense
for every nation in Europe”? That too was forgotten. The wave which he started, the upsurge of the common man, would never disappear, but it would undulate, sinking now into obscurity, coming up again in a spurt of fresh power. For him, for Thomas Paine, revolutionist, that was no consolation; he had failed, and the powers of darkness were rising.

He, who had never been meticulous about his appearance, now completely neglected it. He shaved once a week, sometimes less often. He wore dirty linen and old felt slippers out of which his toes poked forlornly. He shuffled back and forth in the confines of his littered chamber, and sometimes he would stand, head poised, as if trying to recall something he had recently forgotten.

What had he forgotten? That the bells were ringing at Lexington?

Liquor was an old friend; it was a friend when other friends were gone. Let the teetotalers cry out against it, his body was his own; when it was good and strong and vigorous, he had used it unsparingly and not for himself; now it was old and worn out and sick, and if he drank to ease the pain and the loneliness, that was his business and no one else's.

He still had a friend or two among the plain Parisians; good people, the French, simple people, enduring people—civilized people. They understood such things; a man is a man, not a god, and when they saw Paine coming down the street, dirty, shuffling, they did not laugh or hoot at him, but gently passed the time of the day with one who had once been great.

“A good day, Citizen Paine.”

They didn't forget so easily. If there were five heads outside the wineshop, bent over one of the small, smudged Paris newspapers, trying to unravel the involved politics of Talleyrand, and Citizen Paine came along, they deferred to him.

“A good day, citizen—this man Talleyrand.”

“I know him, only too well,” Paine said.

There was nothing incongruous to them in this poor creature having been not so long ago the intimate of Talleyrand.

“He came to me for advice,” Paine said. “I don't like him.”

Nothing incongruous in that either; a king became a beggar and a beggar a dictator. Hadn't they lived through those times and didn't they know the broad loops the wheel of fortune made?

In the wineshop, the shopkeeper was the soul of quiet courtesy. He had sold to Danton, to Condorcet, and now he was selling to Citizen Paine. He saw glories that were not so long ago, and he tried not to see a dirty old man.

“The best, of course,” he nodded, and chopped a franc he could ill afford from the price.

In that way, Citizen Thomas Paine passed out of the public life of France.

Living with the Bonnevilles was an old man called Paine, a rather ineffectual old man who puttered about at one thing and another—and sometimes would pause in the midst of what he was doing, with an absent seeking expression on his lined face. He was given to brief lapses of memory, and he was none too tidy. Sometimes out and rambling about Paris, he would come home with a bottle of brandy wrapped in newspaper under his arm, and closing his door behind him would drink half of it in an hour. Then, drunk, he would sometimes make a nuisance of himself—all of which the Bonnevilles put up with very patiently. When asked why by a curious neighbor, they would answer, very simply:

“You see, he is a great man, one of the greatest men this world has ever known. But the world is a quick place, and you have to scurry to keep up with it. He is too old to scurry about like a hare, and therefore the world has forgotten him. But we have not forgotten him.”

Nicholas de Bonneville was a newspaper editor, a liberal, and a republican. His wife was a good-natured young woman who believed ardently in whatever her husband believed in. When he told her of Tom Paine's greatness, she nodded and agreed. She came of country folk, and had the peasant's tolerance for the whims of the aged, and because of that and because of what her husband told her, she put up with this untidy old man whose room was a litter of newspapers, books, little mechanical contrivances, empty brandy bottles, and numerous manuscripts, some of which occasionally appeared in her husband's newspaper.

One morning, in the fall of 1797, a short, pudgy stranger appeared at the Bonnevilles' front door and asked for Citizen Thomas Paine. At first Madame Bonneville stared at him suspiciously, then, recognizing him, she broke into excited welcome, ushered him into her parlor, offered him a glass of wine which he refused, blundered here and there and everywhere in her nervousness, and finally clattered upstairs to call Citizen Paine.

Paine, laboriously working at a manuscript, raised his brows as she burst in and asked whether or not the house was burning down. Ignoring this bit of facetiousness on the part of her lodger, she said breathlessly:

“Monsieur, Bonaparte is downstairs!”

“Who?”

“Listen to me, listen very carefully, Monsieur. Napoleon Bonaparte is sitting downstairs in my parlor at this very moment, waiting to speak with Citizen Thomas Paine. Do you understand me? He has come here, alone, for no other purpose than to speak with Citizen Thomas Paine!”

“Of course, I understand you,” Paine growled. “Stop shouting; go downstairs and tell him to go away.”

“What? Monsieur, surely you misunderstand me. I said—”

“I know what you said. Go down and tell him I have no time for brigands and evil men.”

“No, no, no, no,” Madame Bonneville sighed. “No, no, this you cannot do here under my roof. I have put up with many things, with dirt and drunkenness and noisiness, but I will not see a great general of France who has come to my house turned away.”

“I pay my rent and keep,” Paine muttered.

“No, Monsieur, it is not a question of rent, not if you paid double what you do. You will see Bonaparte or—”

“Very well, I will see him,” Paine snorted. “Bring him up here.”

“Here? In this?”

“And what's wrong with this? I live here, don't I?”

“No, no, no, no, Monsieur—you will come down to my parlor.”

Paine shrugged. “Then down to your parlor,” he agreed, and followed her downstairs. As they came into the parlor, Bonaparte rose and bowed, and Paine was struck immediately with the insignificance of the man, so short, so pudgy in body yet so lean in face, a shopkeeper possibly, but not the great general, not the warrior, not the diabolical genius who was shredding away the last remnants of the French Republic and the hopes and prayers of all men of good will.

“How sad it is,” the old man thought, “that the great heroes and great villains of the world do not fulfill themselves physically!”

“You are Citizen Paine,” Napoleon said. “I am Bonaparte—I have looked forward to this day, eagerly, hopefully. It is not often given us to meet the great ones of the ages. They pass away, and we must content ourselves with the legends. But I stand face to face with the greatest of all legends—Citizen Paine!”

That was not what Paine had expected; that broke through his armor, his defense, his calculated hatred for a man who represented all that he deemed evil. He was old; he was lonely; he was tired of being vilified; and this was a tribute.

He said, “Thank you, General.”

“Not General, Citizen Bonaparte to Citizen Paine. My friend, sit down, if it pleases you.” He had a way of command, even in things he asked, such as the simple matter of courtesy. Paine sank into a chair, but Napoleon paced back and forth, his head forward, his hands clenched behind him in a gesture that was already part of him.

“Citizen Paine,” Napoleon said, “whatever you have thought of me, here is what I have been thinking of you—that a statue of gold should be erected to you in every city on the face of this earth, that your work should be enshrined—enshrined, I say. Don't I know? Have I not read
Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason?
Read them—reread them, I tell you! I sleep with
The Rights of Man
under my pillow, so that if I spend a night in wakefulness, insomnia shall not rob me but become instead a privilege. You and I are the only republicans, the only men with vision enough to look beyond the stars! A United States of the World?—I agree with you. I say an end to autocracy, an end to dictatorship! I take up your torch!”

Bewildered, Paine could only sit there and stare at the little man. What do words mean? Had he been mistaken? Does Utopia come out of such blustering and through no other manner? He didn't know; his head was whirling. Perhaps he had listened only to the lies that were spoken about Bonaparte; they told lies about Paine too.

“I need you,” Napoleon said. “We are both dedicated to mankind, to Republican France, and if we work together who can say to what lengths the dreams of Citizen Paine and Citizen Bonaparte may not go? Soon I will have a military council, and if you will sit there, I will be both honored and rewarded.”

The old man was staring at him.

“You agree then?” Bonaparte smiled; his smile could be very winning.

“I will think of it,” Paine nodded. “I will think of it.”

After Napoleon had gone, Paine went up to his room, shaking off Madame Bonneville who would have a first-hand account of every word that had been spoken. He wanted to be alone; he wanted to think back and see what had brought him to this. In his room, he saw himself very plainly, the trash and dirt all about him, the old, stained dressing gown that he wore, the grime under his nails, the disarray of his gray hair. He found a comb and began to draw it through his thinning strands, musing all the while on these last years in Republican France.

Would he meet with Bonaparte? “Why not?” he asked himself. “Didn't I go back to the Convention again? I have not abandoned men; they have abandoned me and my principles. If the only hope left is Bonaparte, then I will go to him.”

Hope had returned, a future had returned, and once more he was Thomas Paine, champion of mankind. He was going to sit at a military council with Bonaparte. After he had shaved, he looked in his mirror and said:

“Ten years younger—a man is as young as he feels. When Franklin was my age, the revolution had not yet started. They will say of Paine that his life began at sixty, that he taught the world that the mind does not grow old.”

He had money, for his books were selling well, and he stuffed his wallet greedily. The devil with the future. First clothes, and then the hairdresser; a man does not go to the hairdresser in rags.

At the tailor's, a brow was raised until he snapped angrily, “I am Citizen Paine, damn you! Enough of that and show me your styles.”

“Something special, perhaps? Something for an occasion?”

“Something for a military council,” he said, as offhand as he could. “Bonaparte will be there.”

And then a hurry and a scurry, clerks running from all over the place.

“Something simple, black, I think.”

“Naturally, black, citizen. One recognizes that for such an occasion a black worsted, in keeping with your background, and perhaps a touch of satin to add dignity—”

He bought shirts and shoes and stockings; the generals of France would not sneer at Tom Paine. Then, clothed in his fine new raiment, he went to the hairdresser. There were no secrets from a Parisian hairdresser. “I look too old, much too old,” Paine said. “When a man still has work to do and people to meet, important people, he desires to make a certain impression.”

The years can't be bounced off so fatuously, and when Paine came back to the Bonneville house, the reaction had set in. He sat in the parlor in his new clothes, staring at the place Bonaparte had occupied, the pudgy little man with the thin face, the commanding voice, the savior of mankind—

Bonneville came in, glanced at Paine, raised a brow but politely refrained from any comment.

“Tricked out like a popinjay,” Paine smiled, a note of dejection in his voice. “Do you like it, Nicholas?”

“Very much,” Bonneville nodded.

“Necessary,” Paine shrugged. “I am embarking on a new career. When everything else is done and gone, the great Napoleon Bonaparte visits me, makes me his confidant, and informs me that he sleeps each night with a copy of
The Rights of Man
under his pillow. Either his pillow is too low, or I have been mistaken in the man.” Paine leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes for a moment or two, then whispered:

“Nicholas, I am afraid. This is my last hope. What if it fails?”

As he entered the room where the council was being held, the military men, the engineers, admirals, generals, and political advisors who made up the group, each rose and bowed under the watchful eye of Bonaparte, who said again and again, very ingratiatingly:

“Here is Citizen Paine, messieurs, of whom you have heard. If you saw me with a book in my hands during one of our passages in arms, you may be sure that it was something Citizen Paine wrote. I introduce him as the first republican.”