“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.” CHAPTER XXVII--THE HOUSE IN THE RUE TOURNON