"The 'commonly believed outrageous action' [quoting Torrey] of Thomas Paine in living with another man's wife was shown to have been the kindly hospitality shown by an old man of sixty-seven to the refugee family of his French benefactor. The only man who had ever imputed a shadow of obloquy to Paine in this connection went into the witness-box after Paine's death and solemnly swore that there was no foundation for his calumny." The basis of this calumny was one of the many noble acts of Paine's life. When it became known that Napoleon had designs against the liberties of France, and was planning to elevate himself to power, Paine and Bonneville opposed him. Concerning the results of this rupture Stead quotes from Conway as follows: "In return Bonaparte suppressed Bonneville's paper, threw Bonneville into prison and placed Paine in surveillance. Afterwards by the intervention of the American minister Paine was permitted to leave the country. Bonneville was forbidden to quit France. A year after Paine crossed the Atlantic Madame Bonneville with her children escaped to America.... So far from Paine having taken Bonneville's wife away from her husband, he did everything to induce Napoleon to free Bonneville from surveillance and to allow him to rejoin his wife in New York." Stead finally forced Torrey to eat his words and to make the following retraction: "It is the obligation of those who make the charges to prove them, and to my mind this particular charge against Paine has not been proven." M. and Madame Bonneville had befriended Paine, had invited him to their home where for years he enjoyed their hospitality. When Bonneville was imprisoned and impoverished and his family reduced to penury, Paine would have been a base ingrate had he not befriended them. Dr. Lucy Waite: "The one circumstance in the life of Thomas Paine that to my mind more than any other reflects credit upon him as a man, has been made the target of the most bitter attacks against him--his relations to Madame Bonneville.... His detractors would no doubt have considered it a more 'moral' act if he had sent them to the poor-farm instead of to his own farm at New Rochelle; but to the everlasting credit of this great man he defied the town gossips, and made them comfortable in his own home." Slanders concerning Paine's marital troubles have been published. He was married twice before coming to America, in 1759 to Mary Lambert, who died, and in 1771 to Elizabeth Olive, from whom he was separated. The separation was by mutual consent and nothing discreditable to either party was alleged. As to the cause of the separation all that is known, or rather surmised, is stated in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, an Orthodox authority: "His first wife had died about a year after their marriage; he lived about three years with his second, when they separated by mutual consent, it is said, on account of her physical disability."