“Nay, Raoul, I can think of nothing else, and therefore can talk of nothing else.  Suppose the vice-governatore should suddenly take it into his head to send a party of soldiers to le Feu-Follet, with orders to seize her—­what would then be your situation?”

“Let him; and I would send a boat’s crew to his palazzo, here”—­the conversation was in French, which Ghita spoke fluently, though with an Italian accent—­“and take him on a cruise after the English and his beloved Austrians!  Bah!—­the idea will not cross his constitutional brain, and there is little use in talking about it.  In the morning, I will send my prime minister, mon Barras, mon Carnot, mon Cambaceres, mon Ithuel Bolt, to converse with him on politics and religion.”

“Religion,” repeated Ghita, in a saddened tone; “the less you say on that holy subject, Raoul, the better I shall like it, and the better it will be for yourself, in the end.  The state of your country makes your want of religion matter of regret, rather than of accusation, but it is none the less a dreadful evil.”

“Well, then,” resumed the sailor, who felt he had touched a dangerous ground, “we will talk of other things.  Even supposing we are taken, what great evil have we to apprehend?  We are honest corsairs, duly commissioned, and acting under the protection of the French Republic, one and undivided, and can but be made prisoners of war.  That is a fortune which has once befallen me, and no greater calamity followed than my having to call myself le Capitaine Smeet’, and finding out the means of mystifying le vice-governatore.”

Ghita laughed, in spite of the fears she entertained, for it was one of the most powerful of the agencies the sailor employed in making others converts to his opinions, to cause them to sympathize with his light-hearted gayety, whether it suited their natural temperaments or not.  She knew that Raoul had already been a prisoner in England two years, where, as he often said himself, he stayed just long enough to acquire a very respectable acquaintance with the language, if not with the institutions, manners, and religion, when he made his escape aided by the American called Ithuel Bolt, an impressed seaman of our own Republic, who, fully entering into all the plans imagined by his more enterprising friend and fellow-sufferer, had cheerfully enlisted in the execution of his future schemes of revenge.  States, like powerful individuals in private life, usually feel themselves too strong to allow any considerations of the direct consequences of departures from the right to influence their policy; and a nation is apt to fancy its power of such a character, as to despise all worldly amends, while its moral responsibility is divided among too many to make it a matter of much concern to its particular citizens.  Nevertheless, the truth will show that none are so low but they may become dangerous to the highest; and even powerful communities seldom fail to meet with