Captain Paul

Upon hearing this, Lusignan and Marguerite experienced the most lively joy, for they hoped that their brother had come with the intention of taking up his abode with them; but the character of the young seaman was too adventurous, and stood too much in need of excitement, to sink quietly down into the monotonous and unvaried dulness of a life on shore. He informed his friends that he had but eight days to remain with them, after which he should seek in another quarter of the globe, to follow the profession he had adopted.

These eight days passed by as rapidly as a dream, and notwithstanding the reiterated entreaties of both Lusignan and Marguerite, Paul would not consent to delay his departure even for twenty-four hours. He was still the same ardent determined being, considering the execution of a resolution he had once formed as a positive duty, and more austere with regard to himself than toward others.

The hour of separation had arrived. Marguerite and Lusignan wished to accompany the young commodore on board his ship; but Paul wished not to prolong the grief of this leave-taking. When they reached the jetty he embraced them for the last time, then jumped into his boat, which was rowed away as swiftly as an arrow. Marguerite and Lusignan followed him with their eyes until his boat had disappeared on the leeward side of the frigate, and they sorrowfully reascended the hill to watch the ship's departure, from the same terrace from which they had before discerned its arrival.

At the moment they reached it, they observed that activity and bustle on board the frigate which always precede the departure of a vessel. The sailors had surrounded the capstan, and were employed in getting up the anchor, and thanks to the pureness of the atmosphere, the sonorous and lively cries of the seamen reached the ears of Lusignan and Marguerite; the anchor was soon apeak, and they saw it rising slowly under the ship's bows; then the sails dropped successively from the yards, from the royals to the courses, and the ship, seemingly endowed with an instinctive and animated feeling, gracefully turned her prow toward the harbour's mouth, and beginning to move, cut through the waves with an easy motion, as if merely gliding upon their surface. Then, as if the frigate might be abandoned to her own will, they saw the young commodore spring upon the stern rails, and devote all his attention to the land he was thus leaving. Lusignan took out his handkerchief and made a signal, to which Paul replied. And then, when they could no longer perceive each other with the naked eye, they had recourse to their telescopes, and, thanks to this ingenious invention, they retarded the separation for another hour. They all felt a presentiment that this separation would be eternal.

The vessel gradually diminished upon the horizon, and darkness was about to cover the heavens, when Lusignan ordered a quantity of wood to be brought upon the terrace, to form a beacon fire, which was instantly ignited, in order that Paul, whose vessel was nearly enshrouded in the darkness, might continue to fix his eyes upon that spot until he had doubled Cape Trois Pointes. Lusignan and Marguerite had for an hour lost sight of the ship, while Paul, thanks to their large brilliant fire, might still perceive them, when a bright flame, like to a flash of lightning, appeared on the horizon, and in a few seconds the report of a gun, similar to the prolonged sound of distant thunder, reached their ears, and all again was silent. Lusignan and Marguerite had received Paul's last farewell.

And now, although the domestic drama which we had undertook to relate, has, in fact, terminated here, some of our readers may, perhaps, have felt sufficient interest in the young adventurer, of whom we have made the hero of this story, to follow him in the second part of his career; to these then, after thanking them for the kind attention they have been pleased to grant to us, we are about to recount truly and plainly, facts which a most minute research have enabled us to lay before them.

At the period we have reached, that is to say, in the month of May, 1784, the whole of Europe had fallen into that state of torpor, which unthinking men imagined to be tranquillity, but which minds more profound, regarded as the dull and momentary calm that precedes the tempest. America, by obtaining her independence, had prepared France for her revolution. Kings and people, mistrustful of each other, were upon their guard. Peter III., who had become odious to the Russians, in consequence of his ignoble character, the narrowness of his political views, and above all, for his excessive leaning to Prussian manners, and Prussian discipline, had been deposed without opposition, and strangled without a struggle. Catherine had thus found herself, at the age of thirty-two, mistress of an empire which extended over one-seventh part of the globe; her first care was to compel the neighbouring powers to accept her as a mediatrix in their quarrel, and thus become do-pendent upon her. Thus, had she obliged the people of Courland to drive from them their new Duke, Charles of Saxony, and to recall Biren; she had sent her ambassadors and her armies to Warsaw, there to have crowned by the name of Stanislaus Augustus, her former lover, Poniatowski; she had formed an alliance with England; she had associated to her policy the Courts of Vienna and Berlin; and notwithstanding all these great projects of foreign policy, she had not neglected the internal government of her own country, and in the interval of her amours, so fickle and so various, she still found time to reward industry, to encourage agriculture, to reform the laws, to raise a navy, to send Pallas into provinces the productions of which were till then unknown – Blumager into the northern Archipelago, and Bel-lings into the Indian ocean; in fine, jealous of the literary reputation of her brother, the King of Prussia, she wrote with the same hand that had ordered the erection of a new city, signed the order for the execution of young Ivan, and the dismemberment of Poland, The Refutation of the Journey into Siberia, by the Abbé Chappe, a romance of the Czarowich Chlose, several plays, among which was a translation into French of Oleg, a drama, written by the Russian poet, Dersehawin, so that Voltaire proclaimed her the Semiraris of the North, and the King of Prussia, in his letters, classed her between Solon and Lycurgus.

The effect produced amid this voluptuous and chivalric court by the arrival of such a man, as our adventurous seaman, can readily be imagined. The reputation for courage, which had rendered him the terror of the enemies of France and America, had preceded him to the court of Russia, and in exchange for his frigate, which he presented to Catherine, he received the rank of Rear-Admiral. Then the flag of Russia, after having navigated round one-half the old world, appeared in the Grecian seas, and beneath the ruins of Lacedemon and the Parthenon, he, who had assisted in establishing the independence of America, dreamt of the re-establishment of the Republics of Sparta and of Athens. The old Ottoman empire was shaken to its foundations, the defeated Turks signed a treaty of peace at Kainardji. Catherine retained Azof, Taganrog, and Kenburr, and Kenburn, compelled the Turks to grant to her the free navigation of the Black Sea, and the independence of the Crimea; she then desired to visit her new possessions. Paul, recalled to St. Petersburgh, accompanied her on this journey, the route of which had been drawn up by Potemkin. During the whole of it, all the attributes of triumph were offered to the conquering Empress and her suite; bonfires were lighted all along the road, cities were illuminated with the most fairy-like brilliancy, magnificent palaces erected, as if by magic, for one day, amid desert countries, and which the next morning disappeared; villages, rising as if beneath the wand of an enchanter, in solitudes, in which eight days before the Tartars fed their flocks; towns appearing on the horizon of which there existed but the exterior walls; in every direction, homage, and songs of welcome, and dances of the people: during the day, a numerous population crowded the road, and at night, while the Empress was sleeping, they would run to station themselves in the way she was to proceed on waking the following morning: a king and emperor rode by her side, calling themselves not her brothers, not her equals, but her courtiers; finally, a triumphal arch was erected at the last halt she was to make on her journey southward, bearing the inscription – "This is the road to Byzantium," which if it did not reveal the ambition of Catherine, demonstrated at least, the policy of Potemkin. Then Russia became strengthened in her tyranny, as America had in her independence. Catherine offered to her Admiral places which would have more than satisfied the rapacity of a courtier, honors which would have overwhelmed the ambitious, estates which would have consoled a deposed king for the loss of his dominions; but it was the deck of his ship, it was the sea with its combats and its tempests, it was the boundless immensity of ocean for which yearned the heart of our adventurous and poetic seaman. He, therefore, left the brilliant court of Catherine, as he had left the austere Congress of America, and returned to France to seek that, which he could not find elsewhere, that is to say, a life of excitement, enemies to combat, a people to defend. Paul arrived in Paris in the midst of our European wars and civil struggles; while, with one hand, we were seizing a foreign enemy by the throat, with the other, we were tearing our own entrails. That king, whom he had seen ten years before, beloved, honored, powerful, was then a captive, despised and strengthless. All that had been exalted was abased, and great names fell as did high-born heads. – It was the reign of equality, and the guillotine was the levelling instrument. Paul inquired after Emanuel, and was told that he was proscribed. He asked what had become of his mother, and was informed that she was dead. Then he felt an irresistible longing to revisit once again, before he himself might die, the spot on which, twelve years before, he had experienced emotions at once so sweet and terrible. He set out for Brittany, left his carriage at Vannes, and mounted on horseback, as he had done on the first day he had seen Marguerite; but he was no longer the young and enthusiastic seaman, whose desires and hopes had no horizon; he was a man bereft of all those, brilliant illusions, for he had tasted of all, whether weet or bitter, had learnt to appreciate all, both men and things; had known all, glory and oblivion. Therefore, did he not come to search a family, but to visit tombs.

When he came within sight of the castle, he turned his eyes toward Achard's house, and not being able to discover it, he thought he would go into the forest, but the forest seemed to have vanished as by enchantment. It had been sold as national property to twenty-five or thirty farmers of the neighbourhood, who had cleared off the timber, and transformed it into a large plain. The gigantic oak had disappeared, and the plough had passed over the unknown grave of the Count de Morlaix, and the eyes of his son even, could no longer recognize the spot.

Then he returned through the park toward the castle, now become even more gloomy and desolate than when he had last seen it. In it he found only an old man, a living ruin amidst these ruins of the past; it was at first intended to have pulled down the mansion, but the reputation for holiness which the marchioness had left behind her, was regarded with such religious veneration throughout the country, that the old walls, which for four centuries had been the abode of her ancestors, remained undesecrated. Paul went through the apartments, which for three years had remained closed, and which were now open for him. He walked through the portrait gallery; it was in the same state as he had formerly seen it; no pious hand had added to the portrait either of the marquis or the marchioness. He went into the study in which he had been concealed – found a book lying in it which he had opened and placed upon the very spot on which he found it, and read the same passages which he had read so many years before. He then pushed open the door which communicated with the contract chamber, where had passed the chief scenes of that drama in which he was the principal actor. The table was still in the same place and the Venetian looking-glass over the chimney-piece was there, shattered as it had been by the ball of Emanuels pistol.

Paul advanced to the fire-place, and placing his elbow on the marble mantle-piece, questioned the servant as to the last years of the Marchioness.

The account he received shewed that she had remained austere and melancholy, as was her wont. Remaining secluded and alone at the castle, her hours were uniformly spent in three different places: her oratory, the vault in which the body of her husband had been buried, and the spot sheltered by the oak tree, at the foot of which her lover had been interred. For eight years after the evening on which Paul had taken leave of her, she had been seen to wander amid the old corridors of the castle, and in the gloomy avenues of the Park, slow and pale as a spectre; then a disease of the heart, engendered by the agonies she had suffered, declared itself, and she daily became weaker. At length, one evening, when her failing strength no longer permitted her to walk, she had ordered the servants to carry her to the foot of the oak tree, her favorite walk, that she might once more see, she said, the sun setting in the ocean. When they had reached the spot, she desired the servants to withdraw, and to come back to her in half an hour. On their return they found her lying fainting on the ground. They immediately bore her to the castle, but having recovered her senses on the way, she ordered them, instead of conducting her to her own room, which they usually did, to take her down into the family vault. There she had still strength enough to kneel upon the tomb of her husband, and made a sign that she desired to be left alone. However imprudent their doing so might be, the servants elbow on the marble withdrew, for she had accustomed them to obey her in every thing at the first intimation of her will. They, however, remained at a short distance, concealed behind the corner of a tomb, that they might be ready to render her assistance, should it be necessary. In a few minutes they saw her fall down upon the stone on which she had been praying; they rushed forward, imagining that she had again fainted. She was dead.

Paul requested the old servant to conduct him into the vault, and slowly entered it with uncovered head; and when he had reached the stone which covered the grave of his mother, he knelt down and prayed. On the monumental stone were inscribed the following words, and which may still be seen in one of the chapels of the church of the small town of Auray, to which it has since been removed. The inscription had been written by the marchioness herself, and she had desired that it should be placed upon her tomb.

"Here lies the very noble and very puissant lady Marguerite Blanche de Sablé, Marchioness of Auray; born the 2nd of August 1729 – died the 3rd September, 1788.

"Pray for her and for her children."

Paul raised his eyes to heaven, with an expression of infinite gratitude, His mother, who during her life, had for so long a time forgotten him, had remembered him in her funeral inscription.

Six months after this visit, the National Convention decreed, in solemn sitting, that they would attend in a body the funeral procession of Paul Jones, formerly a commodore in the American navy, and whose burial was to take place in the cemetery of Pere La Chaise.

They had come to this decision, said the decree, in order to consecrate the establishment of religious freedom throughout France.