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“Might I bring hi, lifeless in his arms He had passed out on the short journey “Madame?”

“Madame Bonneville, Monsieur Paine’s friend,” the wo him in”

The house on Herring Street, he traded in his life of isolation and work for one of lively debate and familial concern The Bonneville family took care not only of Paine—as a drunk and prone to apoplexy—but Marcus, too It beca in the hospital, or after a busy day of attending private patients in his home on nearby Stuyvesant Street France had rejected Paine, and Marcus’s fellow Americans now ridiculed the elder stateson the ground floor, the sash raised so that they could eavesdrop on the conversations in the street, and discuss their reactions to the day’s news There were always books on the table before them, as well as Paine’s spectacles and a decanter of dark liquid Once they’d exhausted current events, they reminisced about their time in Paris, and their shared acquaintances, like Dr Franklin

Marcus brought along his copy of Common Sense, so well-read that the paper felt plush and soft to the touch, and would soes aloud He and Paine talked about the failures of their two revolutions, as well as the successes The colonies’ separation froreater equality, as Paine had hoped There was still hereditary privilege and wealth in America, just as there had been before the revolution And it was still possible to enslave negroes, in spite of what the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence stated

“My friend Joshua Boston toldof people like him or the Pruitts when he wrote that all men were created equal,” Marcus confessed to Paine

“Well, we mustn’t rest until America lives up to its ideals,” Paine replied He and Marcus often discussed the evils of slavery and the need to abolish it “Are we not all brothers?”

“I think so,” Marcus said “Perhaps that’s why I carry your words with o, and not the Declaration of Independence”

As the weeks passed, Marcus got to know Marguerite Bonneville, Paine’s companion Madame Bonneville and her husband, Nicholas, had known Paine in Paris Bonneville had published Paine’s works, and when the authorities tried to shut his press down the man fled When Paine returned to Aht Madame Bonneville and her children with him Marcus’s friendship with Mada with each other in French Not long after that, the two became lovers Still, Mada his farm in the country and his affairs in the city as well as his engage health

Marguerite and Marcus were both at Paine’s bedside when the iven voice to a revolution quietly passed on from the world of men on a hot and humid day in June 1809

“He’s gone” Marcus gently crossed Paine’s hands over his heart The year Paine spent in Paris’s Luxe Prison in 1794 had left him frail, and Marcus had known that his friend’s devotion to strong drink would hasten his end

“Monsieur Paine was a good reat one,” Madame Bonneville said Her eyes were swollen with tears “I do not knoould have happened to us, had he not brought us to America”

“Where would any of us be, without Tom?” Marcus closed the front of his wooden medicine case, the time for balsams and elixirs now over

“You knoished to be buried at New Rochelle, a the Quakers,” Madame Bonneville said

They both knehere Paine kept his final testament: behind a thin panel of wood in the back of the kitchen cupboard

“I’ll take him there,” Marcus said It was more than twenty miles, but he was prepared to honor his friend’s last wishes no matter the cost or distance “Wait with hion”

“We will go, too” Madame Bonneville laid a hand on Marcus’s arm “The children and I will not abandon him Or you”

—

THEY REACHED NEW ROCHELLE DURING the lingering suht It had taken all day Two blackPaine’s body They were the only tea to haul a dead man nearly as far as Connecticut in the suhed in his face when he proposed the journey They had plenty of work in the city Why should they take a rotting body up the coast?

Marcus rode alongside the wagon, and Marguerite and her eldest son, Benjae Once they arrived in New Rochelle, they checked into an inn, for it was too late to bury Paine at this hour Marcus and the Bonnevilles shared a room while the drivers, Aaron and Edward, slept with the horses in the barn

The next uerite were turned away froround

“He was not our brother,” said the elder who barred the the low stone walls

Marcus argued with the man, and when that didn’t work, he tried to arouse the fellow’s patriotism That failed, as well, as did Marcus’s atteuilt

“So e door in frustration

“What do we do now?” Marguerite asked She was sheet white with exhaustion, and her eyes were circled with hollows of grief “I’er we can keep the hired men”

“We bury hi squeeze

Marcus dug the grave himself under the walnut tree where Paine had sat on su shade frorave between the roots of an ancient tree This tith and his love for Paine made short work of the task

There was no minister present, no one to say God’s words over the body as Aaron, Edward, Marcus, and Benjauerite held a bouquet of flowers she picked froure The drivers left as soon as their business was done, and returned to New York

Marcus and Marguerite stood by the grave until the light began to fade, her sons Benja quietly between them

“He would want you to say so look

But Marcus could think of nothing appropriate to say over the body of a man who did not believe in God, or the church, or even the afterlife Thoion was the worst forh death and into eternity—soed to do

At last, Marcus settled on repeating so Thomas himself had written

“‘My country is the world, and ood’” Marcus took a handful of earth and sifted it into the grave “Be at peace, friend It is time for others to continue your work”

The death of Thomas Paine cut Marcus’s final ties to his forh it was, had failed to do Marcus had walked the earth forthat tirade pull of Hadley, his faone, there was nothing left to look back upon but a chronicle of loss and disappointment Marcus needed to find a future that did not have sothe search would take

—

MARCUS FOUND HIS FUTURE at the southern boundary of America, in the sultry city of New Orleans

“When did you arrive?” Marcus asked his patient, a young ees continued to flood into New Orleans from the island that they had once called home, driven away by war between Spain and France