"Declared an outlaw by the same Convention which he had so long used as an instrument of his private vengeance, Robespierre was killed like a dog.... The death of Paine's mortal enemy saved his life."--_Ibid._ Madame Lafayette: "The news of your being set at liberty,... has given me a moment's consolation in the midst of this abyss of misery." Madame Lafayette, like Thomas Paine, was a prisoner, daily expecting death. Her mother, grandmother and sister, prominent members of the French nobility, all died together on the scaffold. Lafayette himself was at this time confined in an Austrian dungeon. Glorious was the freedom born of the French Revolution, but terrible was the travail. Daniel Coit Gilman, LL.D.: "His [Minister Monroe's] effort to secure the release of Thomas Paine from imprisonment was a noteworthy transaction." "Released from prison at Monroe's intercession."--_Richard Hildreth._ Stanislaus Murray Hamilton: "Paine was liberated by the Committee of General Surety in consequence of Monroe's assertion of his American citizenship, and demand for his release; but he had suffered an imprisonment of ten months and nine days before Monroe's generous and manly aid reached him." We owe a debt of gratitude to James Monroe. He rescued Paine from prison and from death. When Paine was thought to be dying, as a result of his imprisonment, the Monroes tenderly cared for him in their own home and nursed him back to life and health. Washington's apparent neglect of Paine, which for nearly a century rested as a deep stain upon an otherwise fair name, filled Paine with astonishment and grief and caused him to write that bitter letter of reproach. It is now known that this seeming indifference of Washington was due to the treachery of Monroe's predecessor, Gouverneur Morris. A. Outram Sherman: "It is a long story, how his secret instructions conflicted with Paine's hearty and open love for America's ally, how Morris virtually acquiesced in his imprisonment by Robespierre as a foreigner, how Morris misled Washington to believe he had demanded Paine's release as an American, and how he misled Paine to believe that Washington had given no directions that Paine be so reclaimed." Nelson's Encyclopedia, in its article on Paine, says: "It seems clear that his imprisonment was in part the result of a discreditable intrigue to which Gouverneur Morris, the American minister, was a party." Madison, in a letter to Jefferson, dated January 10, 1796, referring to Paine's letter to Washington, says: "It appears that the neglect to claim him as an American citizen when confined by Robespierre, or even to interfere in any way whatever in his favor, has filled him with an indelible rancor against the President, to whom it appears he has written on the subject. His letter to me is in the style of a dying one, and we hear that he is since dead of the abscess in his side, brought on by his imprisonment."