Admiral Paul Jones travels to the mouth of the Dnieper and joins
Potemkin, who is a military fool. Suwarrow, old and cunning and
vigilant and war-wise, is another man. He goes aboard his flagship, the
_Vladimir_, of seventy guns. From the beginning he is befriended by the
grizzled Suwarrow and thwarted by the foppish Potemkin. This latter is
a discarded favorite of Catherine; and, since she is very loyal to a
favorite out of favor, he knows he may take liberties. Old Suwarrow,
over his brandy, tells Potemkin’s story to Admiral Paul Jones.
“He kept the Empress’ smiles for a season,” explains Suwarrow; “when all
of a sudden, having seen Moimonoff, she fills Potemkin’s pockets with
gold and jewels, gives him a two-thousand-serf estate, and bids him
‘travel,’ as she bid twenty of his predecessors travel. ‘In what have I
offended?’ whines Potemkin. ‘In nothing,’ returns the Empress. ‘I liked
you yesterday; I don’t like you to-day; that is all. So you see, my
friend, that you can no longer stay in Petersburg, but must travel!’
This was ten years ago,” continues old Suwarrow. “Potemkin comes down
here, and the Empress puts him in charge, and sustains him in all he
says and does. My dear Admiral, you must get along with Potemkin to get
along with her.”
Admiral Paul Jones is by no means sure that he must get along with
Potemkin, and regrets that he quitted France, which holds his Aimee.
However, being aboard the _Vladimir_, and having to his signal twenty
ships, he resolves to strike one blow for the savage Catherine, if only
to see how a Russian fights and what battering a Turk can stand. It will
give him something to talk of, something by which he may compare the
English and French and Americans, when next at his ease, with Genet or
Jefferson or mayhap King Louis as a fellow conversationist.
The chance comes; Admiral Jones engages the Turkish fleet off Kinburn
Head, and destroys it after sixteen hours’ fighting--sinking some,
burning others, breaking completely the power of the Crescent. The Turks
bear a loss of twenty-nine ships and more than three thousand sailors,
while Admiral Paul Jones loses but three small ships. Having advantage
of the victory, old Suwarrow brings his army across the Boug. At one
blow, Admiral Paul Jones unlocks the Liman and throws it open to the
victorious entrance of old Suwarrow.
Oczakoff falls; Admiral Paul Jones, sick of the cowardice and duplicity
of Potemkin and his parasite Nassau-Siegen, relinquishes his command. He
bids old Suwarrow good-bye, and travels in a manner of lordly leisure,
not at all Russian, but particularly American, back to St. Petersburg
and the Empress. As he bids farewell to old Suwarrow, the latter detains
him:
“Wait!”
Then he takes from one of his camp chests a priceless cloak of sea-otter
and sable, lined with yellow silk, and an ermine jacket, white as snow,
set off with heavy gold frogs.
“Take them, mon Paul,” says the old soldier, pressing them upon Admiral
Paul Jones. “They are too fine for me.” Here he looks complacently
at his threadbare gray coat and muddy boots. “No; were I to wear such
feathers, my soldiers, who are my children, wouldn’t know their old papa
Suwarrow.”
The Empress receives Admiral Paul Jones in her palace of the Hermitage.
She is affable, condescending, appreciative, and assigns him to command
the naval forces in the Baltic. She makes him rich in gold; for, while
the Empress will so far humor Potemkin as to remove Admiral Paul Jones
out of his way, she will not fail of doubly rewarding that mariner for
the victory which Potemkin is now trying to steal.
Admiral Paul Jones grows dissatisfied, however. The Russian nobility
intrigues against him, and de Segur, the French Minister, must come to
his rescue. They steal his letters from Aimee; and, not hearing from his
beloved, he becomes homesick. He tells the Empress that he must go; she
consents when he promises to continue drawing full pay as Admiral. That
agreed to, she allows him leave of absence for two years, and back he
goes to Paris and his Aimee’s arms. He calls on De Segur, the French
Minister, before he starts, and thanks him for his friendship.
“But you will return?” says De Segur.
“Never! I want no more of Russia and its Russians! What is this Court of
Catherine, but a place where vilest purposes are arrived at by agencies
most wretched, and artifices that should disgrace a dog? I am of an
honor unfit for such a place, as silk is unfit for mire. The very people
are without charity or a commonest humanity. They are like the wolves of
their own forests; should they discover one of their brothers, wounded
or stricken down, instead of offering aid, they would fall upon
him--rending and devouring him!”
“Sixteen long months! Sixteen dreary months you have been gone!” says
Aimee, when they are again together at the cottage in the Rue Vivienne.
“They are over, little one,” he replies, “over, never to return. Aside
from being separated from you, which is to be separated from the sun”
--here he caresses her red-gold hair--“they were the sixteen months most
miserable of my life.”