One afternoon Theobald brought home to dinner a new acquaintance whom he had met the previous day in the gallery of the House of Commons. Mrs. Tone was as much taken as her husband by the fascinating address of this tall soldierly man with the dark eyes, coal black silky hair, and olive complexion, whom Theobald introduced to her as Thomas Russell. Long afterwards these three who dined together then for the first time, remembering the date of their first re-union, felt inclined to keep its anniversary as a festival. As Tone, on the eve of the most momentous crisis of his life, the departure of the Bantry Bay expedition, sat in a quiet corner of Paris reviewing his past, he counted the day he made Russell’s acquaintance as one of the most fortunate in his life. He joins the name of the passionately loved wife with that of the beloved friend. “I frame no system of happiness for my future life on which the enjoyment of his society does not constitute a most distinguishing feature, and if I am ever inclined to murmur at the difficulties wherewith I have so long struggled, I think on the inestimable treasure I possess in the affection of my wife, and the friendship of Russell, and I acknowledge that all my labours and sufferings are overpaid. I may truly say, that, even at this hour when I am separated from both of them, and uncertain whether I may ever be so happy as to see them again, there is no action of my life, which has not a remote reference to their opinion which I equally prize. When I think I have acted well, and that I am likely to succeed in the important business wherein I am engaged, I say often to myself: ‘My dearest love and my friend Russell will be glad of this.’”[56] Footnote 56: “Autobiography,” p. 29.