Presently the beautiful Aimee quits the room, and the good Marchioness de Marsan tells her story.

“There is surely no reason why you shouldn’t know, my dear Commodore,” she says; “since all France knows. Aimee’s mother is of the de Tiercelins—a noble house, but impoverished. As a girl the mother was ravishingly lovely. This was in the days of Monsieur le Bel and the Parc-aux-Cerfs. The old king saw Mademoiselle de Tiercelin; the Pompadour did not object. Aimee was born; and presently her mother, whom the king called his ‘de Bonneval,’ was put away with a pension. The Bonneval’s father talked loudly, and was sent to the Bastile as a ‘Russian spy.’ One may say what one will in the Bastile; the walls are thick and have no ears. The Pompadour looked after poor de Bonneval and the little Aimee. She married the mother to a gentleman named Telison. The Pompadour died; the king died; Aimee was sixteen. Her stepfather de Telison, and her mother de Bonneval neglected her. They said ‘She is a Bourbon. Let the Bourbons provide.’ So I, who am her godmother, took Aimee. That was four years ago; and now it is as though she were my own child in very fact—I love her so.”

“But the present king?”

“Thus far he has done nothing for Aimee. She goes to court; her position is recognized; the king is kind. But you know the cold Savoy blood?—it is stingy! However, that is now of little moment so far as Aimee is concerned, for I am rich.”

Commodore Paul Jones is established at the palace of the good Marsan. Sailors are swift to love; the image of Aimee fits into his heart as into a niche that was made for it.

The second day he calls on the Duchess de Chartres—the beautiful girl-Duchess. He wears a guilty feeling at the base of his conscience. Fortunately his cheek is tanned by wind and weather, and the guilty feeling does not show.

The girl-Duchess is with her husband, the Duke de Chartres, who has quit the sea for the shore, his man-of-war for his palace. The girl-Duchess receives Commodore Paul Jones in something of a formal manner, which is a relief to him. His manner is also formal, which is not a relief to her. The Duke, who makes a specialty of democracy, greets him with bluff cordiality as a brother sailor. He congratulates him on beating the “English dogs,” whom he hates professionally. Commodore Paul Jones is modest in his replies. For he is not thinking of the Serapis, but on Aimee; and, with the eyes of the girl-Duchess upon him, that guilty feeling overlays all else.

The girl-Duchess watches him through halfshut lids. She almost guesses the truth; for she knows of the good Marsan, and Aimee. Besides, she is a woman, and clairvoyant in matters of the heart.

After an hour with the Duke and the girl-Duchess, Commodore Paul Jones goes back to the good Marchioness de Marsan and to Aimee. As an excuse for his own idleness, he travels down to l’Orient and, albeit the Alliance is as fit as a fiddle, sets Lieutenant Dale, “Dick the practical,” to overhauling the ship from truck to keel. Then he returns to the good Marsan and Aimee.

Now he spends sunny hours in the beautiful Aimee’s company, and his love creeps and grows upon him like ivy on a wall. The conqueror is conquered; the invincible is overthrown. As for Aimee, her blue eyes become a deeper blue, her pink cheeks take on a warmer pink when he is near. And the good Marsan sees it all, and does not interfere. For she is versed in the world and its ways; and this is France; and after life comes death.

When the ardent sailor would be too ardent, Aimee represses him; the barrier of her modesty is as a barrier of ice between them. Thereupon he loves her the more, and refreshes his soul with Shakespeare:


“Chaste as the icicle
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