Though Dr. Gilbert has been in the Bastille, though he barely escapes the bullet of a revolutionist, he tries to unite the throne and the people. So, as we have seen, did Paine struggle until the King took flight, and, over his own signature, branded all his pledges as extorted lies. Henceforth for the King personally he has no respect; yet the whole purpose of his life is now to save that of the prisoner. Besides his humane horror of capital punishment, especially in a case which involves the heads of thousands, Paine foresees Nemesis fashioning her wheels in every part of Europe, and her rudder across the ocean,--where America beholds in Louis XVI. her deliverer. Paine's outlawry, announced by Kersaint in Convention, January 1st, was more eloquent for wrath than he for clemency. Under such menaces the majority for sparing Louis shrank with the New Year; French pride arose, and with Danton was eager to defy despots by tossing to them the head of a king. Poor Paine found his comrades retreating. What would a knowledge of the French tongue have been worth to this leading republican of the world, just then the one man sleeplessly seeking to save a Kings life! He could not plead with his enraged republicans, who at length overpowered even Brissot, so far as to draw him into the fatal plan of voting for the King's death, coupled with submission to the verdict of the people. Paine saw that there was at the moment no people, but only an infuriated clan. He was now defending a forlorn hope, but he struggled with a heroism that would have commanded the homage of Europe had not its courts been also clans. He hit on a scheme which he hoped might, in that last extremity, save the real revolution from a suicidal inhumanity. It was the one statesmanlike proposal of the time: that the King should be held as a hostage for the peaceful behavior of other kings, and, when their war on France had ceased, banished to the United States. On January 15th, before the vote on the King's punishment was put, Paine gave his manuscript address to the president: debate closed before it could be read, and it was printed, He argued that the Assembly, in bringing back Louis when he had abdicated and fled, was the more guilty; and against his transgressions it should be remembered that by his aid the shackles of America were broken.