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government.
Radcliffe tapped his pocket, in which he was carrying, besides his own written
invitation, a sealed letter addressed to Paine.
The sealed letter was in fact a private plea, from Washington himself, couched
in diplomatic language, urging Paine to stop making an ass of himself, and
sever his connection with the crazy men who were generally giving the idea of
revolution a bad name, and were irritating the English unnecessarily.
Melanie simply nodded. No intelligent, politically conscious Frenchwoman
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needed the identity or importance of Tom Paine explained to her.
God knew, Philip didn't blame the peasants of France for revolting. Not after
all the stories of starvation and maltreatment he had heard in the short time
since he had arrived in the country. Many thousands had gone hungry, millions
had been treated like animals under the old regime. But during the few years
since the fall of the Bastille, the new stories of mass beheadings and worse
were deeply disturbing. Surely human rights and justice were not to be
established by turning into savage animals. Humanity ought to mean more than
finding a new and painless method of capital punishment&
Philip continued trying to gather information about the political situation
from old Jules, as well from Melanie. Radcliffe hadn't been in Paris for many
years, having come directly to the estate from some seaport town, after a
surreptitious landing in a small boat on the beach.
In Paris, things will be different." His voice sounded confident, though he
could no longer feel sure of that.
"That may be, Citizen." The old man, who had probably never in his life been
more than two or three miles from where he was born, let alone to the big
city, scratched his head, sounding dubious.
Philip clung to the idea that he would have much less reason to worry about
his own personal safety once he had reached the city. Here in the countryside,
barbarism reigned.
But in Paris he would be respected, given a hearing, as an American and an
acquaintance perhaps he could even claim to be a friend of Paine.
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In short, discounting rumors to the contrary, and thinking that the latest
stories from the capital were probably exaggerated, Radcliffe clung to a
belief that in
Paris the Revolution would not be conducted by backward peasants. It would be,
or at least could be made to be, more reasonable, more enlightened. There
would be, there must be, some sane authority to whom it would be possible to
appeal. It was out here in the hinterlands that people had turned utterly into
savages.
When Philip asked Melanie when she had last visited Paris, her replies were
somewhat vague.
"I seem to remember your father telling me, once, that the Remains had
relatives there?"
That is true; I have a cousin." With Old Jules listening solemnly, an anxious
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expression on his face, she gave Philip the address."
She did not share Philip's hope that they would find the new government more
moderate in the city. But she was willing to go there, or anywhere, on the
chance of being able to help her father. In that effort she had nothing to
lose.
Marguerite, a quiet and timid girl, expressed no wish to go with the party to
Paris, and Philip thought that the girl's grandfather would have sternly
discouraged the idea if she had.
In any case Philip packed essentials blankets for sleeping out, powder and
ball for his pistols, matches, razor, a change of linen, a little food and
money, a clay pipe and some tobacco in a couple of saddlebags, and tied the
reins of his horse to the back of Melanie's light carriage.
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Turning back for a last look, when he was already seated in the carriage with
reins in hand, Radcliffe sighed. The house would have to be abandoned to its
fate
 there was no one to defend it, or the barns, which were now standing empty,
prey to wind and weather, or any of the rest of the property. Besides, as an
American in the revolutionary tradition, he was more than half-convinced that
peasants who had been so long and viciously oppressed had some just claim to
the land and other wealth of France. As for himself, he had no time or effort
to spare in trying to assert a claim on property. He could expect nothing but
more trouble if he stayed here, and therefore decided to evacuate the place
while he still had a chance.
Once on the road, Philip and Melanie encountered little other traffic. They
discussed the question of which revolutionary leader they should try to see
first when they reached Paris. Tom Paine seemed a logical choice, though
Melanie was doubtful about how much influence the American actually possessed.
Other possibilities were Robespierre himself, or the chief prosecutor,
Fouquier-
Tinville. A few months ago, Melanie would have chosen to put her case before
Danton, but Dan-ton himself had lost his head in April.
Another subject kept intruding: their recent strange encounter with the
wounded man, now almost miraculously healed, who called himself Legrand.
Melanie had an idea that this morning's change in the behavior of the servant
girl, Marguerite, was somehow connected with the man's presence.
Radcliffe frowned. "But the fellow was three-quarters dead when he arrived.
You don't suppose he ?"
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"I don't know."
But never mind, there were plenty of other things to worry about.
Of course the main subject of the travelers' thoughts, whether they spoke of
it or not, was the fate of Dr. Remain. As far as Melanie knew, her father was
still alive, but he could easily have been beheaded this morning, or
yesterday, or the day before, and she, at this distance from Paris, would be
none the wiser.
"Philip, for the first time I am glad that my mother is dead. At least she was
spared this torture." And with that, Melanie fell into a long silence.
Philip could only admire his companion's courage in bearing up as well as she
did.
The more time Philip spent with Melanie, the more she intrigued and sometimes
irritated him. She was of course vastly, delightfully changed from the child
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he remembered yet in some delicious sense she was still the same girl. A
remembered trick of tossing her hair to one side, with a quick motion of her
head. His small female playmate of those days, now transformed into womanhood.
Melanie and Philip considered stopping at the house of Melanie's family in the
nearby village to get some of her things, but she decided that would be taking
an unnecessary risk; the local Committee of Public Safety might decide at any
time to resume operations. The house in town would be deserted anyway. Her
mother had died years ago, and all her other relatives were either dead or
absent.
Melanie was reluctant to give a firm estimate of the number of days it would
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