. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose
researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are
original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives
at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's
landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had
supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The
arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness"
(Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was
that he had kept in his house "Paine and other Englishmen,"--Paine
being then in prison,--but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry
accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord."
This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis,
whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or
Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion
(said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour),
and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution
(October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades,
that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest
to the world,--"The Age of Reason,"--in the state in which it has since
appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during
the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would
be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of
the guillotine suspended over him,--a fact which did not deter pious
mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written
the book.

In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first
edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no
doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on
his way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American
ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French archives cast an
unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were
taken with Paine's proofs.

I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work
on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any
punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I
will now add that in following Paine's quotations from the Bible I have
adopted the Plan now gener