commodore paul jones, nervously irritable with the loss of the america, asks leave of congress to go as a volunteer with the french fleet, which hopes to find and fight the english in the west indies. congress consents, and he sails southward with captain vaudreuil, to fight yellow fever, not english, and return much shaken in health. as a solace and a recuperative, he sends divers cargoes of oil to europe on a speculation, and makes forty thousand dollars. all the time he is pining to get back to paris, his aimee, the good marsan, as well as aimee’s sister’s “sweet little godson,” that must “be covered with kisses.” he is detained by his accounts with the government and his claims for prize money. after heart-breaking delays, his affairs are adjusted; again he finds himself outward bound for france. his aimee meets him with kisses sweet as heaven. he unlocks her white arms from his neck, and asks in a whisper:
“where is he?”
“he is dead!” she says, with a rush of tears.
then she carries him to a quiet cemetery, and, taking his hand, leads him to a little grave, upon which the new grass has not grown two weeks. there is a tiny headstone of pale granite, and on it the one word:
“paul.”
his gaze is long and steadfast as he holds fast by his aimee’s hand. then his tears are united with hers; they stand bowed above the little grave.
commodore paul jones and his aimee, while ever together, formally conceal the tie that binds them. he has business with the king about prize money; she has petitions before the king about the blood that is common to her veins and his; and both the good marsan and doctor franklin say it is better that the king should not know. and so the king goes feeding his squirrels and forgetting his people, in ignorance of what took place on that midnight before the candle-lighted altar of our lady of loretto. but the wise old world is not so thick, and winks and smiles and wags its wise old head; and whenever it passes a pretty cottage in the rue vivienne it points and whispers tolerantly. for the wise old world loves lovers; and because aimee always officially resides with the good marsan when her “paul” is in paris, and actually resides with that amiable gentlewoman when her “paul” is in london, or copenhagen, or elsewhere on the complex business of those prize moneys, no one finds fault. and so four years of love and truth and sweetness, four beautiful years, throughout which the birds sing and the sun shines always, come and go for commodore paul jones and his aimee; and every noble door in france swings open at their approach.
the prize money gets into a tangle, and commodore paul jones consults his friends, mirabeau and the venerable malesherbes. then he visits america, and is feted and feasted, while his aimee—each year rounder and plumper and more bewitching—with the red-gold hair growing ever redder and more golden—stays in paris by the side of the good marsan, and keeps a loving eye on the vine-clothed cottage in the rue vivienne.
nothing can exceed the honors wherewith commodore paul jones is stormed upon and pelted while in america. he is banqueted by the morrises, the livingstons, the hamiltons, the jays, while—what is more to his heart’s comfort—he is visited by dale and fanning and mayrant and lunt and stack and potter and scores of his old sea wolves of the ranger and richard, who crowd round him to press his hand. in the end he drinks a last cup of wine at the livingston manor house, rides down to the foot of cortlandt street, and goes aboard the governor clinton, which, anchors hove short, awaits him. it is his last glass in america, his last glimpse of the shores for which he fought so valorously; november sees him in the straits of dover, nineteen days, out from sandy hook.
he goes to paris, and the king has him to lunch at versailles—a nine-days’ social wonder, the like of which has not been witnessed by a staring world since an elder louis dined jean bart. the royal luncheon over, commodore paul jones again settles down to the dear smiles and the love of his aimee, while the aristocracy of france lionizes the one and worships the other.
one day mr. jefferson, now america’s minister to versailles, and greatly the friend of our two love birds, walks in upon them in that little vine-embowered cottage in the rue vivienne. he has big news. the empress catherine asks commodore paul jones to become an admiral in the russian navy. the turks are troubling her; she wants him to sweep these turbaned pests from the black sea.
the cheek of commodore paul jones flushes, his eye lights up. between love and war his heart was formed to swing like a pendulum. now he has loved for a season, he would like nothing better than another game with those “iron dice of destiny,” vide licet cannon balls; and where should be found a fitter table than the black sea, or a more eligible adversary than the turk? thus it befalls that his aimee goes to court with madam campan, the noble daughter of the noble genet, and translates english plays into french for the amusement of versailles; while be, hot of heart and high of head, as one who snuffeth the battle afar off, makes a straight wake for st. petersburg.
commodore paul jones meets the empress catherine in her palace of czarsko-selo. outside the snow lies thick; for it is april, and winter is ever reluctant to quit st. petersburg. he is pricked of curiosity concerning this russian empress, for whom he is to draw his sword. he hopes—somewhat against hope, it is true, when he recalls her sixty years—that she will prove beautiful. for he is so much the knight of romance that he fights with more pleasure for a pretty face than for a plain one.
the empress is before him; he can now put his hopes to the test. his eyes fall upon a thick, gross figure—a woman the antithesis of romance.
her mouth is coarse, her nose high and hawkish, her forehead full, her gaze hard and level, her whole face harsh—having been so often burned and swept of passion. and yet he feels the power of this white, fire-eyed savage, with her heart of a phryne and her brain of a henry the eighth. there is so much that is palpable and brutish about her, however, that he stands off from her contact and remembers with regret his delicate aimee of the red-gold locks.
commodore paul jones has been too well trained as a courtier to let fall the polite mask which he wears, and nothing could be more elaborately suave than are the manners he assumes. the ferocious catherine gets some glimmer of his inward thought for all that. every inch the empress, she is even more the woman. to the day of her death the unpardonable offence in any male of her species is a failure to fall in love with her. she receives some chilling touch of her new admiral’s aversion, and it turns her into angry ice. still, if he will not sigh for her, he shall serve her: so she says to herself. he remains in st.
petersburg a fortnight; the empress sees him more than once. when they are together, they talk of potemkin, suwarrow, the turks, and the black sea.
