la Révolution was reached, and Louis ascended the scaffold. He was beginning to protest his innocence, when on the signal of Santerre his voice was drowned by the beating of drums, the executioner seized him, and in a moment all was over.
The death of Louis was probably necessary for the safety of the Republic at the time, but one cannot help having some pity for one whose worst offences were a certain feebleness and good nature which made him the ready tool of a cruel, unscrupulous and designing woman. It should be noted, as regards the decree in the Convention, that, unlike the Girondins, plucky Tom Paine, up to the last, manfully voted in the sense in which he had always spoken, viz., for the life of the King, and this at the imminent risk of his own. Notwithstanding this act, a grateful Respectability (which afterwards tried to exalt the feeble Louis into a hero and a martyr) has ever since heaped every vile calumny on poor Paine's memory.
