erving to the President that 'the time had
not yet come in America to do ironwork equal to that before him.'
The Americans present looked at the key with indifference, and as if
wondering why it had been sent But the serene face of the President
showed that he regarded it as an homage from the French nation."
"December 13, 1790. The Key of the Bastille, regularly shown at the
President's audiences, is now also on exhibition in Mrs. Washington's
_salon_, where it satisfies the curiosity of the Philadelphians. I am
persuaded, Monseigneur, that it is only their vanity that finds pleasure
in the exhibition of this trophy, but Frenchmen here are not the less
piqued, and many will not enter the President's house on this account."

In sending the key Paine, who saw farther than these distant Frenchmen,
wrote to Washington: "That the principles of America opened the Bastille
is not to be doubted, and therefore the Key comes to the right place."

Early in May, 1791 (the exact date is not given), Lafayette writes
Washington: "I send you the rather indifferent translation of Mr. Paine
as a kind of preservative and to keep me near you." This was a hasty
translation of "Rights of Man," Part I., by F. Soules, presently
superseded by that of Lanthenas.

The first convert of Paine to pure republicanism in France was Achille
Duchatelet, son of the Duke, and grandson of the authoress,--the friend
of Voltaire. It was he and Paine who, after the flight of Louis XVI.,
placarded Paris with the Proclamation of a Republic, given as the first
chapter of this volume. An account of this incident is here quoted from
Etienne Dumont's "Recollections of Mirabeau":

"The celebrated Paine was at this time in Paris, and intimate in
Condorcet's family. Thinking that he had effected the American
Revolution, he fancied himself called upon to bring about one in France.
Duchatelet called on me, and after a little preface placed in my hand an
English manuscript--a Proclamation to the French People. It was nothing
less than an anti-royalist Manifesto, and summoned the nation to
seize the opportunity and establish a Republic. Paine was its author.
Duchatelet had adopted and was resolved to sign, placard the walls of
Paris with it, and take the consequences. He had come to request me to
translate and develop it. I began discussing the strange proposal,
and pointed out the danger of raising a republican standard without
concurrence of the National Assembly, an