"By the within despatches for Congress I am persuaded you will observe with pleasure that my connection with a court is at an end, and that my prospect of returning to America approaches. The great seem to wish only to be concerned with tools, who dare not speak or write truth. I am not sorry that my connection with them is at an end. In the course of that connection I ran ten chances of ruin and dishonour for one of reputation; and all the honours or profit that France could bestow should not tempt me again to undertake the same service with an armament, equally ill composed, and with powers equally limited. It affords me the most exalted pleasure to reflect that, when I return to America, I can say that _I have served in Europe at my own expense, and without the fee or reward of a court_,[32] When the prisoners we have taken are safely lodged in France I shall have no further business in Europe, as the liberty of our fellow citizens who now suffer in English prisons will then be secured; and I shall hope hereafter to be usefully employed under the immediate direction of the Congress." It is a remarkable thing that, during the perplexities and harassing incidents of his stay in the Texel, with the constant demands made upon him in every direction, the difficulties with which he had to cope, the responsibilities he assumed, the problems he had to solve, and the dangers grappled with, he found time to carry on such a voluminous and extraordinary correspondence as has been preserved. Among other documents he drew up a long memorial to Congress recounting his career and public services to date, which is of much service to those who strive to solve the enigma of his complex life and character. The tendency to lionize a hero was as prevalent then as now, and Jones was compelled by the exigencies of his situation to refuse many invitations of a social nature at Amsterdam and The Hague. "Duty," he says, "must take precedence of pleasure. I must wait a more favourable opportunity to kiss the hands of the fair." Certain young impressionable misses, after the custom of the day, indited poetical effusions to him. In the hurry and rush of business he could only find time in his replies to deplore the fact that so much was expected from him that he could not respond in rhyme to these metrical communications. CHAPTER XIII. THE ESCAPE OF THE ALLIANCE. Christmas day passed gloomily enough, I imagine, for the Americans on the Alliance. There had been opportunities, of course, when it would have been possible for Jones to have made the mouth of the harbor, but his capture would have been inevitable. So, on one pretext or another, he delayed until the night of the 27th of December, when he weighed anchor and dropped down to the mouth of the Texel. Early the next morning in a howling gale he dashed for the sea. On the same day he sent the following note back to Dumas, and merrily proceeded on his way: