The foreign menaces had thus far caused the ferocities of the revolution, for France knew it was worm-eaten with enemies of republicanism. But now the Duke of Brunswick had retreated, the French arms were victorious everywhere; and it is just possible that the suicide of the Republic--the Reign of Terror--might never have been completed but for that discovery (November 20th) of secret papers walled up in the Tuileries. These papers compromised many, revealed foreign schemes, and made all Paris shriek "Treason!" The smith (Gamain) who revealed the locality of that invisible iron press which he had set under the wainscot, made a good deal of history that day. A cry for the king's life was raised, for to France he was the head and front of all conspiracy. How everybody bent under the breath of those days may be seen in the fact that even Gouverneur Morris is found writing to Lord Wycombe (November 22d): "All who wish to partake thereof [freedom] will find in us (ye French) a sure and certain ally. We will chase tyranny, and, above all, _aristocracy_, off the theatre of the Universe."* * "Diary and Letters." The letter was probably written with knowledge of its liability to fall into the hands of the French Committee. It could not deceive Wycombe. Paine was living in the "Passage des Pétites Peres, No. 7." There are now two narrow passages of that name, uniting near the church "Notre Dame des Victoires," which still bears the words, "Liberty Egalité, Fraternity." No. 7 has disappeared as a number, but it may have described a part of either No. 8 or No. 9,--both ancient. Here he was close to a chapel of the Capucines, unless, indeed, it had already been replaced by this church, whose interior walls are covered with tablets set up by individuals in acknowledgment of the Virgin's miraculous benefits to them. Here he might study superstition, and no doubt did; but on November 20th he has to deal with the madness of a populace which has broken the outer chains of superstition with a superstition of their own, one without restraints to replace the chains. Beneath his window the Place des Victoires will be crowded with revolutionists, frantic under rumors of the discovered iron press and its treasonable papers. He could hardly look out without seeing some poor human scape-goat seeking the altar's safety. Our Lady will look on him from her church the sad-eyed inquiry: "Is this, then, the new religion of Liberty, with which you supplant the Mother and Babe?"