routine, of a flattering responsibility, of a sympathetic task.

One looks at that curious, masklike countenance, at those somber, mysterious eyes; one remembers a delicate childhood, an astounding precocity, a reckless industry which so often denied sleep, an arduous physical effort, accompanied by accumulating exposure and exhaustion, followed by months of illness, of listlessness, of "hypochondria;" one is aware of a constant expenditure of energy, bodily and mental, a constant strain of worry and contrivance in private affairs, a constant battering of pride and sensibilities in public life; one recalls the ordeal at Richmond, the indignities in London, the ills and discomforts of Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany, the famished plight at Paris. Aaron Burr was fiftyfour in 1810; he had endured, and hazarded, and suffered much; if the door guarding his sanity had ever been the least ajar, then was the time, perhaps, for it to swing slowly open.

And while heredity is often a deceptive guide, one may not forget that on one side of his house Colonel Burr's direct ancestry, however remote, was tainted with active insanity. The thing was in the blood which flowed through his veins, and is not denied in family annals. At all events, it may well be prudent to consider the record of Aaron Burr's life-the years already disclosed and the years to come in the light of such a surmise. It will, in some instances, be most charitable.

CHAPTER IV

INSULA INHOSPITABILIS

I

THE long denied passport to leave the Empire was finally issued. Colonel Burr had strong friends at court in Mr. Denon and the Duke de Bassano; the French Government was just as well satisfied to have him out of the country; and Mr. Russell was at last persuaded to grant the Colonel's request. But the matter was not to be so simple. It was early in March, 1811, that Mr. Russell had consented to draw up the document; late in April the passport had been mislaid in some of the French bureaus, and a new application became necessary.

While he was waiting for the governmental red tape to unwind itself, Colonel Burr went on a trip to Amsterdam to interview the officials of the Holland Company, his interest in the land project having been temporarily revived. He also visited the Persian church, in which three Persians were “singing very loud and in the most horrible discord,' and had a ridiculous adventure at a crowded inn, involving an embarrassing nocturnal domestic arrangement with a lady passenger. But most import

ant of all was his meeting with Captain Coombs, of the ship Vigilant, who, after having suffered confiscation, was waiting for permission to sail, and who offered to take the Colonel aboard and provide him with a cabin. Colonel Burr, who had just returned to Amsterdam from a sightseeing tour through Holland, abandoned his previous plan of sailing from Bordeaux, and went back to Paris, where he arrived on June 22.

John Vanderlyn was in some sort of trouble, so that "if he does not go to the United States he will be in jail here in a year," and the passport now had to be changed to apply from Amsterdam instead of Bordeaux, an alteration to the securing of which the Duke de Bassano consequently applied his patient energies. In the meantime, the Colonel was spending money, buying presents for Theodosia, interesting himself in schemes for preserving milk, eggs and fruit, calling on Albertine, and renewing the overtures to the Holland Company. It was June time in Paris, and the Duke had loaned him ten thousand francs.

But the Duke was very busy in the Colonel's behalf-perhaps it was in his mind to avoid lending him any further sums if possible-and when Mr. Russell began to raise objections to the change in the passport, Mr. de Bassano knew just what to do. "The person," he wrote Mr. Denon, on July 18, "through whom I have communicated to Mr. Russell that he should not have refused a new passport to Mr. Burr was in the country. I wrote to her yesterday to return. She arrived at the moment your note was received. I shall have the passport in the

course of the day, and shall forward it immediately to the Duke [de Rovigo] and I am convinced that you will receive it tomorrow to transmit to Mr. Burr." And later on the same day, “I have received the passport from Mr. Russell for Mr. Burr, and have sent it to the Duke de Rovigo, requesting an immediate return of it. It ought to reach me this evening. Thus there is nothing to prevent the departure of the Colonel tomorrow, unless the police should throw those obstacles in the way which I think I have prevented."

With the help of the "person" it was all arranged, and on July 19, accompanied by a secretary, Colonel Burr set out in a cabriole for Amsterdam. Behind him he left a whole catalogue of debts, some tearful ladies, the portrait of Theodosia which John Vanderlyn was copying, and a list of errands for the latter's attention. He was glad to go-for he was "weary of Europe"-and no doubt many people in Paris were glad to see him go.

2

But Colonel Burr might just as well have stayed in Paris, for nearly three months were to pass before the Vigilant finally sailed. Three months of delays, and postponements, and false alarms, due to governmental indecision and the repeated assembling of new passengers; for the Colonel, three months of anxiety and increasing distress, since he had been obliged to sell some of his presents in order to pay his four hundred and fifty guilders passage money, and the officials of the Holland Company would hold no further traffic with him.