astonishment was expressed, you said: 'Understand that a beaten enemy
has nothing to fear from us, and becomes a friend.'"




Chapter III.



THE LOVE STORY OF LAPEROUSE.


"My story is a romance"--"Mon histoire est un roman"--wrote Laperouse
in relating the events with which this chapter will deal. We have seen
him as a boy; we have watched him in war; we shall presently follow him
as a navigator. But it is just as necessary to read his charming love
story, if we are to understand his character. We should have no true
idea of him unless we knew how he bore himself amid perplexities that
might have led him to quote, as peculiarly appropriate to his own case,
the lines of Shakespeare:--

"Ay me! for ought that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth,"

During the period of his service in the East Indies, Laperouse
frequently visited Ile-de-France (which is now a British possession,
called Mauritius). Then it was the principal naval station of the
French in the Indian Ocean. There he met a beautiful girl, the daughter