"I had been imprisoned seven months, and the silence of the executive part of the government of America (Mr. Washington) upon the case, and upon every thing respecting me, was explanation enough to Robespierre that he might proceed to extremities. A violent fever which had nearly terminated my existence was, I believe, the circumstance that preserved it. I was not in a condition to be removed, or to know of what was passing, or of what had passed, for more than a month. It makes a blank in my remembrance of life. The first thing I was informed of was the fall of Robespierre." The probabilities are that the prison physician Marhaski, whom Paine mentions with gratitude, was with him when the chalk mark was made, and that there was some connivance in the matter. In the same letter he says: "From about the middle of March (1794) to the fall of Robespierre, July 29, (9th of Thermidor,) the state of things in the prisons was a continued scene of horror. No man could count upon life for twenty-four hours. To such a pitch of rage and suspicion were Robespierre and his committee arrived, that it seemed as if they feared to leave a man to live. Scarcely a night passed in which ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more were not taken out of the prison, carried before a pretended tribunal in the morning, and guillotined before night. One hundred and sixty-nine were taken out of the Luxembourg one night in the month of July, and one hundred and sixty of them guillotined. A list of two hundred more, according to the report in the prison, was preparing a few days before Robespierre fell. In this last list I have good reason to believe I was included." To this Paine adds the memorandum for his accusation found in Robespierre's note-book. Of course it was natural, especially with the memorandum, to accept the Robespierre mythology of the time without criticism. The massacres of July were not due to Robespierre, who during that time was battling with the Committee of Public Safety, at whose hands he fell on the 29th. At the close of June there was an alarm at preparations for an insurrection in Luxembourg prison, which caused a union of the Committee of Public Safety and the police, resulting in indiscriminate slaughter of prisoners. But Paine was discriminated. Barrère, long after, apologized to him for having signed "the warrant," by saying he felt himself in danger and was obliged to do it Paine accepted the apology, and when Barrère had returned to France, after banishment, Paine introduced him to the English author, Lewis Goldsmith.* As Barrère did not sign the warrant for Paine's imprisonment, it must have been a warrant for his death, or for accusation at a moment when it was equivalent to a death sentence. Whatever danger Barrère had to fear, so great as to cause him to sacrifice Paine, it was not from Robespierre; else it would not have continued to keep Paine in prison three months after Robespierre's death.