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.