"scribbling trollop," as Walpole styles De Genlis, never forgave him for this holocaust; yet he advanced 12,000 francs with a view to procuring her husband's escape from prison.
In February 1793, Stone and about forty fellow-countrymen arrived at Dover, though without the passports then necessary under the Traitorous Correspondence Act. The captain pleaded that they had embarked at Calais during his absence on shore, and, spite of his objection to receiving them, had forced him to sail. This pretended compulsion was probably a prearranged comedy. Some of the party were "kept rolling about the vessel" for three days off Dover before they were permitted to land. Stone must have speedily returned to Paris, for he gave evidence in May 1793 in favour of General Miranda, suspected of royalism. He had heard Miranda argue in favour of a republic at Turnbull's dinner-table in London when Talleyrand was present, and he knew that his London friends included Fox, Sheridan, Priestley, and Pigott. Stone also seems to have been present at Charlotte Corday's trial, his open admiration for her rendering him in danger of arrest. As it was, he was not exempted from the wholesale arrest of British subjects in October 1793, as hostages for Toulon. After seventeen days at the Luxembourg, he was, however, released. He was again arrested, together with his wife, in April 1794, but liberated next day on condition of
