tinently fled to the woods, closely pursued by the seemingly enraged General. "Time!" cried the referee at the top of his voice. The General paid no attention but continued his course, still brandishing his cutlass from right to left. Both seconds then joined in hot pursuit. Colonel Claiborne was much lighter in weight and swifter of foot than his older competitor. He reached the woods and was soon lost to sight. The seconds caught up with the General and taking him by the arms, induced him to return to the duelling ground. When he reached it, the whole company of spectators gathered about him and he burst into a hearty laugh. Turning to Taylor, he said: "I only meant to have some fun with him. That man has a guilty conscience, and no man who has a guilty conscience can ever hope to come out first best in a duel. Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just. I might mention names but I will not, but when a man kills his defamer in a duel and then successfully fights, almost single-handed, all the lawyers that the government can bring against him, I think he is a pretty smart fellow." The entire company returned to the tavern, where General Jackson's health was drunk at his expense. In a short time he again waxed eloquent and cried out in a voice that sounded like thunder: "By the Eternal! If I could have my way with Wilkinson and that cub of his, I'd take away their swords, tear off their epaulets and stripes, and drive them out of town to the tune of the Rogues' March." 66 The next day, he wrote a letter to a friend in Nashville giving a ludicrous account of the duel. My antagonist," he wrote, "started due West about half-past six A. M. He is evidently still on the way, no word having been received from him at Richmond. He, no doubt, thinks I am still on his track, armed with the avenging cutlass. If you should happen to meet him, you can assure him that I am going to Washington to make sure about that hitching-post, and that I shall not come West again for several weeks, which will give him plenty of time to get back to New Orleans in safety so as to make arrangements for the proper reception of the heroic Wilkinson." CHAPTER XXV THE CITY OF LUTETIA NIFTY years before the Christian Era, Julius F gions, ravaged Ancient Gaul, and, after defeating Vercingetorix, encamped in and about the City of Lutetia of which he gives an account in his Commentaries. Eighteen hundred and fifty years thereafter, another great conqueror, the peer of Cæsar, made a great fête at Paris, the capital of the country of which he, Napoleon, was emperor, even as Cæsar had been emperor of Rome. History had repeated itself; or, rather, had reversed itself, for he had gone forth from the City of Paris, built on the site of the ancient City of Lutetia, and the victorious legions of France had, in their turn, ravaged the domain which had been the seat of the Roman Empire under Cæsar. On the evening of this festal day, the palace of St. Cloud was ablaze with light. The people of France, for Paris was France, were intoxicated with enthusiasm. During the day, the son of the Emperor had been christened and proclaimed King of Rome. Aaron Burr was one of the immense concourse of spectators that stood in the pouring rain and gazed upon the illuminated palace. He had been an enforced resident of Paris for twenty months, when, of his own free will, he would have limited his stay to a fortnight-possibly a month. Why had he remained so long? It is inconceivable that the French authorities should have insisted upon retaining within their borders a man who so ardently desired to leave them behind him. But it was not the fault of the French government that he was denied the desired passports. The opposition came from a different source. General John Armstrong who had been a classmate of Burr at Princeton and who was now United States Minister to France; Jonathan Russell, who was charge d'affaires at Paris; and Mr. McRae, Consul at Paris, who had been one of the counsel for the prosecution at Burr's trial for high treason, formed the trio which combined their forces and used every endeavor to prevent Burr's return to his native land. When one reflects, if he had been allowed to leave France when he desired, that his daughter Theodosia might have been spared to be with him and care for him in his declining years and that her own valuable life and that of her son might have been saved, the responsibility of these three political enemies of Burr for these sad occurrences becomes manifest. It should have caused them a lifelong regret, being an unnecessary sacrifice for which there could be no adequate requital in this world. To the average mind exile is a most unhappy condition. We imagine the poor outcast driven from home and friends and forced to seek an asylum in some foreign land, surrounded by people who speak a strange language and by customs with which he is not acquainted. He is overcome with homesickness, that Heimweh which the Germans consider the most acute mental suffering a human being can endure and live. No doubt the majority of those who, from casual reading, have learned that Aaron Burr was an exile in Europe for four years, have formed some such picture in their minds of his existence while abroad. But such mental conceptions are not always correct, and the pages of history, it must be confessed, do not always convey the whole truth. Fortunately, Aaron Burr left behind him the means of ascertaining just how he passed these four years of exile. To be sure, he was sorry, very sorry indeed to leave his beloved daughter Theodosia, her little son, and his daughter's husband to whom he was greatly attached, and between whom a feeling closely approaching that of love of father and son existed. Burr left many friends behind, but the real ties that it cost him pain to sever were those that bound him to his daughter and her child. But Burr was sanguine. Whatever misfortune might overtake him, he was hopeful of the future, and during his four years residence in Europe his constant thought was of his return and the joyful meeting to follow with his daughter and her child. In proof of this, the nine hundred printed pages of his diary while in Europe supply conclusive evidence. This diary was not written for publication. It was intended only for the perusal of his daughter, Theodosia. He says many times in the course of it: "I will tell you all of this story when we meet and have our little chats together." It was designed as memoranda to guide him in giving more complete accounts of his travels when, safe at home with his daughter, they sat together during the long summer evenings or the still longer ones that come in winter; and he continually refers to these anticipated conversations. His enemies, of whom it may safely be said that he had legion, and those persons so little interested in him as to believe anything prejudicial that might be said of him, have constantly spoken and written of the fact that he was reduced to poverty while abroad, but they do not tell the whole truth; perhaps they do not know it. It will be magnanimous to assume that they did not know that some ten thousand dollars due him |