is known to the whole American people.... Have I not
given proofs sufficiently striking that I have a heart the most
sensitive, a soul the most elevated?... I am the only man in the world
that possesses a sword given by the king of France ... but what
completes my happiness is the esteem and friendship of the most virtuous
of men, whose fame will be immortal; and that a Washington, a Franklin,
a D'Estaing, a La Fayette, think the bust of Paul Jones worthy of being
placed side by side with their own.... Briefly, I am satisfied with
myself."

X

LAST DAYS

On August 18, 1789, Paul Jones left St. Petersburg, never to return, and
never again to fight a battle. He was only forty-two years old, but
although his ambition was as intense as ever, his health had through
unremitting exertions and exposure become undermined. For many years the
active man had not known what it was to sleep four hours at a time, and
now his left lung was badly affected, and he had only a few years more
to live. After an extended tour, devoted mainly to business and
society,--during the course of which he met Kosciusko at Warsaw,
visited, among other cities, Vienna, Munich, Strassburg, and
London,--Jones reached Paris, where Aimee de Thelison and his true home
were, on May 30, 1790. He resigned from his position in the Russian
navy, and remained most of the time until his death in the French
capital.

The great French Revolution had taken place; and Paul Jones occupied the
position, unusual for him, of a passive spectator of great events.
Acquainted with men of all parties, with Bertrand Barere, Carnot,
Robespierre, and Danton, as well as with the more conservative men with
whom his own past had led him to sympathize,--Lafayette, Mirabeau, and
Malesherbes,--Jones's last days were not lacking in picturesque
opportunity for observation. He felt great sympathy for the king, with
whom he had been acquainted, and who had bestowed upon him the title of
chevalier and the gold sword. For Mirabeau, as for other really great
men Jones knew,--Franklin, Washington, and Suwarrow,--he had extreme
admiration, and on the occasion of the famous Frenchman's death wrote:
"I have never seen or read of a man capable of such mastery over the
passions and the follies of such a mob. There is no one to take the
place of Mirabeau." Of the mob Jones wrote with aristocratic hatred:
"There have been many moments when my heart turned to stone towards
those who call