Her voice sinks at the close, while her eyes leave his for the floor. His presence is like a gale, and she bends before him as the willow bends before the strong wind. Meanwhile, as instructive to Mr. Adams, the loud Doctor is saying:
“No, sir; you must have a wig. No one sees the king without a wig.”
“We talked an hour—the king and I,” goes on the girl-Duchess, recovering herself. “I read him your letter; he was vastly interested. Then I told him how the Ranger had been called to America. Also I drew him pictures of what you had done; and how bravely you had fought, not only your enemies, but his enemies and the enemies of France. And, oh!”—here again the black eyes take on that perilous softness—“I can be eloquent when I talk of you!”
Captain Paul Jones looks tender things, as though he also might be eloquent, let him but pick subject and audience. Altogether there is much to support the gossip-loving Madame Houdetot, in what she has said concerning that summer house at Brest. The voice of the good Doctor again takes precedence.
“Until then, it had been an axiom of naval Europe that no one on even terms, guns and men and ship, could whip the British on the ocean.”
The Doctor and Mr. Adams are discussing the Ranger and the Drake, a topic that has been rocking France.
“Yes,” goes on the girl-Duchess, with a further dulcet flash of those eyes, fed of fire and romance, “you are to have a ship. Here is the king’s order to his Minister of Marine—the shuffler De Sartine. Now there shall be no more shuffling.” She gives Captain Paul Jones the orders. “The ship is the Duras, lying at l’Orient.”
“The Duras!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones. “An ex-Indiaman!—a good ship, too; she mounts forty guns.” Then, as his gaze rests on Doctor Franklin, laying down diplomatic law and fact to Mr. Adams, who listens with a preposterously conceited cock to his head: “What say you, my friend—my best, my dearest friend! Let us re-name the Duras for the good Doctor. Shall we not call it the Bon Homme Richard?”
The girl-Duchess looks her acquiescence as she would have looked it to any proposal from so near and sweet and dear a quarter. Thus the Bon Homme Richard is born, and the Duras disappears. The Doctor, unconscious of the honor done him, is saying to Madame Helvetius, whose fat arm is thrown across his philosophic shoulder:
“With pleasure, madam! It is arranged; I shall dine at your house to-morrow.”