And now dawn many days of love and peace and plenty for Admiral Panl
Jones, days in the midst of friends, glad days made sumptuous by a
beautiful woman, who is a king’s daughter crowned with a wealth of
red-gold hair. He has his business, too, and embarks in speculation;
wherein he shows himself as much a sailor of finance as of the sea. The
imperial Catherine refuses to lose him; but pays to the last like an
Empress, bidding him prolong his vacation while he will. He grows rich.
He has twelve thousand pounds in the bank; while in America, Holland,
Denmark, Belgium and England his interests flourish. He sells his
plantation by the Rappahannock for twenty-five hundred dollars--less
than a dollar an acre; for he says that he has no more heart to own
slaves, and the plantation cannot be worked without them.
The little happy cottage in the Rue Vivienne grows small; neither is it
magnificent enough for his Aimee, of whom each day he grows more proud
and fond. So he removes, bag and baggage, to a mansion in the Rue
Tournon. There the rooms are grand, ceilings tall, fireplaces hospitably
wide.
The wide fireplaces will do for winter; just now he swings a hammock
in the back garden, which is thick-sown of trees and made pleasant by a
plushy green May carpet of grass. Here he lolls and reads and receives
his friends. For the careful Aimee counsels rest, and much staying at
home; because he is a long shot from a hale man, having been broken with
that fever in the West Indies, and in no wise restored by the mists and
the miasmas of the Dnieper marshes.
Through the summer the back garden is filled with chairs, and the chairs
are filled by friends. In the autumn, and later when winter descends
with its frosts, the chairs and the incumbent friends gather in a
semicircle about the wide flame-filled crackling fireplaces. There
be times when the wine passes; and the freighted mahogany sideboards
discover that they have destinies beyond the ornamental.
French politics bubbles and then boils; Paris is split by faction.
Mirabeau controls the Assembly; Lafayette has the army under his hand--a
weak, vacillating hand! These two are of the Moderates.
Admiral Paul Jones, coolly neutral in what sentiments go shaking the
hour, has admirers in the parties. They come to him, and talk with him,
and drink his wines in the shade of the back garden, or by the opulent
fireplaces. Robespierre and Danton, as well as Mirabeau and Lafayette,
are there. Also, Bertrand Barère, who boasts that he is not French but
Iberian, one whose forbears came in with Hannibal. Later, Barère will
preach an open-air sermon on the “Life and Deeds of Admiral Paul Jones.”
Just now in the Assembly he makes ferocious speeches, garnished of
savage expletives culled from the language of the Basques.
Warmest among friends of Admiral Paul Jones is the Thetford corset-maker
Tom Paine, with his encarmined nose and love of freedom. Also Gouverneur
Morris, who has succeeded Mr. Jefferson as America’s Minister in France,
comes often to the Rue Tournon. The pair are with him every day; and
because all three like politics, and no two of them share the same
views, dispute is deep. Aimee of the red-gold hair takes no part in
these discussions, but sits watching her “Paul” with eyes of adoration,
directing the servants, with a motion of the hand, to have a care that
the debaters do not voice their beliefs over empty glasses.
Admiral Paul Jones, while a republican, gives his sympathies to the
king, in whom there is much weakness, but no evil.
“They must not kill the king!” says he.
“And why not?” demands Tom Paine, whose bosom distills bitterness,
and who holds there are no good kings save dead kings. “Has France no
Cromwell? We are both born Englishmen, Paul; our own people ere this
have killed a king.”
“Tom,” cries Admiral Paul Jones, heatedly,
“Cromwell and England should not be cited as precedents here. King Louis
is no Charles; and, as for Cromwell, there isn’t the raw material in all
France to make a Cromwell.”
Gouverneur Morris says nothing, but sips his wine; remembering that,
as the minister of a foreign nation, he should bear no part in French
politics.
The Parisian rabble insult the king, and Lafayette, in command of the
military about the Tuileries, sadly lacks decision. Then comes the “Day
of Daggers;” the poor king, advised by the irresolute Lafayette, yields
to the mob, and the assembled notables are disarmed. The anger of
Admiral Paul Jones is extreme. He breaks forth to his friend Tom Paine:
“Up to this time I’ve been able to find reasons for the king’s
gentleness; but to-day’s action was not gentle, it was weak. I pity
the man--beset as he is by situations to which he is unequal. Lafayette
cannot long restrain the sinister forces that confront him. He has
neither the head nor the heart nor the hand for it. This is a time for
grapeshot. I only wish that I might be in command of those thirty
cannon parked about the palace, and have with me, even for a day, my old
war-dogs of the _Ranger_ and the _Richard_. Believe me, I should offer
the mob convincing reasons in support of conservatism and justice; I
should teach it forbearance at the muzzles of my guns.”
“But the rabble might in its turn teach you,” retorts Tom Paine, with a
republican grin.
“Bah!” he exclaims, snapping contemptuous fingers. “They of the mob are
but sheep masquerading as tigers. One whiff of grapeshot, and they would
disappear.” Then he continues, thoughtfully: “Their saddest trait
is their levity. They are ridiculous even in their patriotism. Their
emblems, representative of the grand sentiments they profess, are as
childish as the language in which they proclaim them is fantastic. There
is the red cap! Borrowed from the gutters, they make it the symbol of
sovereignty! As though a ship were better for being keel up.”
Mirabeau, with his lion’s face, comes in. He is in a fury, and declares
that Lafayette is a practising hypocrite in his pretences of attachment
to the king.
“Hypocrisy!” cries Mirabeau. “That, at least, is a lesson in the school
of liberty he never learned from Washington.”
Others of the Moderates arrive, and join in the conversation.
“You must understand, gentlemen,” observes Admiral Paul Jones warmly,
“that I, in my time, have fought eight years for liberty. But I did not
fight with the decrees of blood-mad Assemblies, or the plots of secret
clubs.”
Those present smile tolerantly; for the mighty Paul is a person of many
privileges, the one man in France who may speak his mind.
“You do not deeply respect the Assembly?” remarks Mirabeau, with a sour
smile.
“The Assembly? What is it? A few who talk all the time, and a great many
who applaud or hiss! Everything about it is theatrical. It struggles for
epigram not principle, and the members would sooner say a smart thing
than save France.”
Paris is turmoil and uproar and tumult. To keep his mind from that
strife which surrounds him, and into which he longs to plunge, Admiral
Paul Jones puts in hours with his secretary, Benoît-André, dictating
his journals. Also, business calls him to London, where he is much
celebrated by the Whigs. He hobnobs with Fox and Sheridan, while Walpole
carries him away to Strawberry Hill. He is with Walpole, when word
arrives that Mirabeau is dead.
“What will be the effect in Paris’?” asks Walpole.
“What will be the effect! It will unchain the worst elements. The
Assembly will now go to every red extreme. While Mirabeau lived, that
strange concourse of evil spirits had a master. He is gone; the animals
are without a keeper.”
Admiral Paul Jones returns to Paris, and finds a letter from Mr.
Jefferson, now Secretary of State. Mr. Jefferson asks him to discover
how far Europe will co-operate to crush out piracy in the Mediterranean.
Also, he explains that President Washington will want the services
of Admiral Paul Jones when he sends an expedition against the Barbary
States.
While he is reading Mr. Jefferson’s letter, a deputation from the
Assembly waits on him, and sets forth informally that it is the present
French purpose to reorganize the navy, and call him, Admiral Paul Jones,
to the command.
“Would you accept?” asks the deputation.
“It would be, gentlemen,” he returns, “the part of prudence, and I think
of modesty, to defer crossing that bridge till I come to it.”
When the deputation goes away, he calls Benoît-André, and sits long into
the night dictating a treatise on reforming the French navy. He
points out how its present inefficiency arises from the fact that, for
centuries, it has been the feeding-ground of a voracious but incompetent
aristocracy, a mere asylum for impoverished second sons, and other noble
incapables. He sends a copy of his treatise to Walpole, who writes him a
letter.
“My dear Admiral,” says he of Strawberry Hill; “let France go. Either
return home to America and rest upon your laurels, or come over to
England, where even those who do not love you admire you. You have
fought under two flags; isn’t that enough? I take your pamphlet to be
simply a bid for a commission in the new French navy, and, because I
love and admire you, I hope it will fail. It will be better so. Your
laurels, won off Flamboro’ Head, will else be turned to cypress, when,
as a French admiral, you become the target of British broadsides, with
none of your stout Yankee tars to stand by and man your guns.”
The winter is at an end; the grass of spring is starting. Admiral Paul
Jones receives a letter from President Washington, who speaks of the
Barbary States, and asks him to give up his commission in the Russian
service. There have been two whose requests with him were ever
final--Franklin and Washington. He does not hesitate, but forwards his
resignation to Catherine. She will not accept, and puts forward old
Suwarrow.
“Do not, my good brother,” writes the old soldier--“do not let any siren
entice you from the service of the Empress. Your Frenchmen are preparing
a stew of mischief that must soon keep all Western Europe busy to save
themselves. That will be Russia’s time. We shall then have a free hand
with the Turk. Our command of the Black Sea is safe. Since you were
there, we have built nine new ships of the line, and six stout frigates.
You shall have them all. Also, I can now protect you from Court
intrigues, which I could not do before. Courtiers, since Ismail, no
longer trouble me; I brush them away like flies. In a new Turkish
campaign, I would be Generalissimo by land and sea; you would be
responsible to no one but me--a situation which, I flatter myself, would
not be intolerable to you. Now, my good brother, the Empress has a copy
of this letter, and agrees with all I say. Make no entanglements in the
west; return to your old papa Suwarrow as soon as you can, and we shall
discuss plans.”
Old Suwarrow’s missive fails of its hoped-for effect. Admiral Paul Jones
gets out President Washington’s letter and reads it again. Then he sends
a polite but peremptory resignation to Catherine, and ends forever with
the Russians.
“But, mon Paul,” says Aimee, who looks over his shoulder, “what a
compliment! England, France, Russia, America--the whole world calls you!
And the answer to all”--here a kiss--“is that you shall stay with your
Aimee until she coaxes back your health.”