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- CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER ADVENTURER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE.
About half-past ten o’clock, as they were thus conversing, Israel’s
acquaintance, the pretty chambermaid, rapped at the door, saying, with
a titter, that a very rude gentleman in the passage of the court,
desired to see Doctor Franklin.
“A very rude gentleman?” repeated the wise man in French, narrowly
looking at the girl; “that means, a very fine gentleman who has just
paid you some energetic compliment. But let him come up, my girl,” he
added patriarchially.
In a few moments, a swift coquettish step was heard, followed, as if in
chase, by a sharp and manly one. The door opened. Israel was sitting so
that, accidentally, his eye pierced the crevice made by the opening of
the door, which, like a theatrical screen, stood for a moment between
Doctor Franklin and the just entering visitor. And behind that screen,
through the crack, Israel caught one momentary glimpse of a little bit
of by-play between the pretty chambermaid and the stranger. The
vivacious nymph appeared to have affectedly run from him on the
stairs—doubtless in freakish return for some liberal advances—but had
suffered herself to be overtaken at last ere too late; and on the
instant Israel caught sight of her, was with an insincere air of rosy
resentment, receiving a roguish pinch on the arm, and a still more
roguish salute on the cheek.
The next instant both disappeared from the range of the crevice; the
girl departing whence she had come; the stranger—transiently invisible
as he advanced behind the door—entering the room. When Israel now
perceived him again, he seemed, while momentarily hidden, to have
undergone a complete transformation.
He was a rather small, elastic, swarthy man, with an aspect as of a
disinherited Indian Chief in European clothes. An unvanquishable
enthusiasm, intensified to perfect sobriety, couched in his savage,
self-possessed eye. He was elegantly and somewhat extravagantly dressed
as a civilian; he carried himself with a rustic, barbaric jauntiness,
strangely dashed with a superinduced touch of the Parisian _salon_. His
tawny cheek, like a date, spoke of the tropic, A wonderful atmosphere
of proud friendlessness and scornful isolation invested him. Yet there
was a bit of the poet as well as the outlaw in him, too. A cool
solemnity of intrepidity sat on his lip. He looked like one who of
purpose sought out harm’s way. He looked like one who never had been,
and never would be, a subordinate.
Israel thought to himself that seldom before had he seen such a being.
Though dressed à-la-mode, he did not seem to be altogether civilized.
So absorbed was our adventurer by the person of the stranger, that a
few moments passed ere he began to be aware of the circumstance, that
Dr. Franklin and this new visitor having saluted as old acquaintances,
were now sitting in earnest conversation together.
“Do as you please; but I will not bide a suitor much longer,” said the
stranger in bitterness. “Congress gave me to understand that, upon my
arrival here, I should be given immediate command of the _Indien_; and
now, for no earthly reason that I can see, you Commissioners have
presented her, fresh from the stocks at Amsterdam, to the King of
France, and not to me. What does the King of France with such a
frigate? And what can I _not_ do with her? Give me back the “Indien,”
and in less than one month, you shall hear glorious or fatal news of
Paul Jones.”
“Come, come, Captain,” said Doctor Franklin, soothingly, “tell me now,
what would you do with her, if you had her?”
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