Betsey knew that her husband had enemies, but the fact gave her little concern; she believed Hamilton to be a match for the allied forces of darkness. She noticed when his hair was unpowdered that it was turning gray and had quite lost its boyish brightness; here and there work and care had drawn a line. But he was handsomer, if anything, and of the scars on his spirit she knew nothing. In the peace and pleasant distractions of his home his mercurial spirits leaped high above his anxieties and enmities, and he was as gay and happy, as interested in the manifold small interests of his family, as were he a private man of fortune, without an ambition, an enemy, or a care. When most absorbed or irritated he never victimized his household by moods or tempers, not only because they were at his mercy, but because his nature spontaneously gave as it received; his friends had his best always, his enemies the very worst of which his intense passionate nature was capable. Naturally his family adored him and studied his happiness.

Betsey continued her somewhat rambling remarks, "The only variety is the French Revolution."

"By the way, Washington has had a distressing letter from Madame Lafayette. She begs him to receive her boy—George Washington—and keep him until the trouble is over. The Chief fears that in the present temper of the public his reception of Lafayette's son would be given an embarrassing significance, and yet it is impossible to refuse such a request,—with Lafayette in an Austrian dungeon, his wife in daily danger of prison or guillotine, and this boy, his only son, with no one but a tutor to protect him. I offered at once to receive the child into my family—subject, of course, to your approval. Should you object? It would add to your cares—"

"I have no cares, sir. I shall be delighted; and he can talk French with the children."

"I shall send him to Staten Island with Philip and Alex. Washington will make him a liberal allowance for school and clothing. I confess I am anxious to receive him, more than anxious to show that my old friendship is undiminished. I fear to open every packet from Europe, lest I hear of Lafayette's death. Fortunately, Morris was able to render some assistance to Madame Lafayette. Morris is a source of sufficient worry himself, for he is much too independent and bold for a foreign envoy in the thick of mob rule, mad with blood."

"I hate to think of old friends in trouble," said Betsey, removing a tear. "Poor Kitty Duer! I had another letter from her to-day. It is pitiful to think of her and the poor little children, with nothing but what Lady Sterling, who has so little, and Lady Mary can give them. Is there no way of getting Colonel Duer out of Debtor's prison?"

"I've moved heaven and earth, but certain of his creditors are inexorable. Still, I hope to have him out and on his feet before long. You are not to worry about other people this evening, for I am particularly happy. Philip is really remarkable, and I believe that Angelica is going to turn out a musical genius. What a delight it is to have one person in the world to whom one can brag about one's offspring without apology."

"Why, of course they are the most remarkable children in the world—all five of them," said Betsey, placidly.

Edward Stevens came in and threw himself on the sofa. "What a relief to come into this scene of domestic tranquillity, after the row outside!" he exclaimed. "All the world is in the streets; that is to say, all the daft American world that sympathizes with that bloody horror in France. The news that the allied armies have been beaten and the Duke of Brunswick was in full retreat when the packets sailed, has apparently driven them frantic with joy. They are yelling 'Ca ira,' bonfires are flaring everywhere, and bells ringing. All of the men are drunk, and some of the women. And yet the statesman who must grapple with this portentous problem is gossiping with his wife, and looking as if he had not a care in the world. Thank Heaven!"

"I can do nothing to-night," said Hamilton, smiling. "I have had too much experience as a practical philosopher not to be happy while I can."

"You have the gift of eternal youth. What shall you do in this French matter, Alexander the Great? All the world is waiting to know. I should worry about you if I had time in this reeking town, where it is a wonder any man has health in him. Oh, for the cane-fields of St. Croix! But tell me, what is the policy to be—strict neutrality? Of course the President will agree with you; but fancy Jefferson, on his other side, burning with approval for the very excesses of the Revolution, since they typify democracy exultant. And of course he is burrowing in the dark to increase his Republican party and inspire it with his fanatical enthusiasm for those inhuman wretches in France. I believe he would plunge us into a war to-morrow."

"No, he is an unwarlike creature. He would like to trim, keep this country from being actually bespattered with blood, but coax the Administration to give the Revolutionists money and moral support. He will do nothing of the sort, however. The policy of this remote country is absolute, uncompromising, neutrality. Let Europe keep her hands off this continent, and we will let her have her own way across the water. The United States is the nucleus of a great nation that will spread indefinitely, and any further Europeanizing of our continent would be a menace which we can best avoid by observing from the beginning a strictly defensive policy. To weaken it by an aggressive inroad into European politics would be the folly of schoolboys not fit to conduct a nation. We must have the Floridas and Louisiana as soon as possible. I have been urging the matter upon Washington's attention for three years. Spain is a constant source of annoyance, and the sooner we get her off the continent the better—and before Great Britain sends her. We need the Mississippi for navigation and must possess the territories that are the key to it. How idiotic, therefore, to antagonize any old-world power!"

"You are long-headed!" exclaimed Stevens. "Good heavens! Listen to that! The very lungs of Philadelphia are bellowing. Our people must be mad to see in this hideous French Revolution any resemblance to their own dignified and orderly struggle for freedom."

"It is so easy to drive men mad," said Hamilton, contemptuously. "Particularly when they are in constant and bitter opposition to the party in power, and possess a leader as subtle and venomous as Thomas Jefferson—'Thomas,' as he signed a letter to Washington the other day. You may imagine the disgust of the Chief."

"Not another word of politics this night!" exclaimed Mrs. Hamilton. "I have not uttered a word for just twenty-five minutes. Alexander, go and brew a beaker of negus."

XXX

The next morning Hamilton was sitting in his office when the cards of James Monroe, F.A. Muhlenberg, and A. Venable were brought in.

"What on earth can they want?" he thought. "Monroe? We have not bowed for a year. Two days ago he turned into a muddy lane and splashed himself to his waist, that he might avoid meeting me."

His first impulse was to excuse himself, on the plea of the pressing nature of his work; but curiosity triumphed, and he told his page to admit the men.

Muhlenberg was again Speaker of the House; Venable was a Representative from Virginia. Hamilton was not friendly with either, but nodded when they passed him. He greeted them amiably as they entered to-day, and exchanged a frigid bow with Monroe. The Senator from Virginia took a chair in the rear of the others, stretched his long legs in front of him, and folded his arms defiantly. He looked not unlike a greyhound, his preference for drab clothing enhancing the general effect of a pointed and narrow leanness.

There was a moment of extreme awkwardness. Muhlenberg and Venable hitched their chairs about. Monroe grinned spasmodically, and rubbed his nose with his upper lip.

"Well, gentlemen," said Hamilton, rapping his fingers on the table. "What can I do for you?" He scented gun-powder at once.

"I am to be the spokesman in this delicate matter, I believe," said Muhlenberg, who looked red and miserable, "and I will, with your permission, proceed to my unpleasant task with as little delay as possible."

"Pray do," replied Hamilton. "The daily assaults of my enemies for several years have endowed me with a fortitude which doubtless will carry me through this interview in a creditable manner."

"I assure you, sir, that I do not come as an enemy, but as a friend. It is owing to my appeal that the matter was not laid directly before the President."

"The President?" Hamilton half rose, then seated himself again. His eyes were glittering dangerously. Muhlenberg blundered on, his own gaze roving. The Federal term of endearment for Hamilton, "The Little Lion," clanged suddenly in his mind, a warning bell.

"I regret to say that we have discovered an improper connection between yourself and one Reynolds." He produced a bundle of letters and handed them to Hamilton. "These are not in your handwriting, sir, but I am informed that you wrote them."

Hamilton glanced at them hastily, and the angry blood raced through his arteries.

"These letters were written by me," he said. "I disguised my handwriting for purposes of my own. What is the meaning of this unwarrantable intrusion into a man's private affairs? Explain yourself at once."

"That is what we have come for, sir. Unfortunately we cannot regard it as a private affair, but one which concerns the whole nation."

"The whole nation!" thundered Hamilton. "What has the nation to do with an affair of this sort? Why cannot you tell the truth and say that you gloat in having discovered this wretched affair,—a common enough episode in the lives of all of you,—in having another tid-bit for Freneau? Why did you not take it to him at once? What do you mean by coming here personally to take me to task?"

"I think there is some misapprehension, sir," said Muhlenberg. "It would be quite impossible for any one present to have misconducted himself in the manner in which the holder of those letters, Mr. Reynolds, accuses you of having done. And surely the whole country is intimately concerned in the honesty—or the dishonesty—of the Secretary of the Treasury."

The words were out, and Muhlenberg sat with his mouth open for a moment, as if to reinhale the air which was escaping too quickly for calm speech. Then he set his shoulders and braced himself to meet the Secretary's eyes. Hamilton was staring at him, with no trace of passion in his face. His eyes looked like steel; his whole face had hardened into a mask. He had realized in a flash that he was in the meshes of a plot, and forced the heat from his brain. "Explain," he said. "I am listening."

"As you are aware, sir, this James Clingman, who has been arrested with Reynolds, was a clerk in my employ. You will also recall that when he applied to me to get him out, I, in company with Colonel Burr, waited on you and asked your assistance. You said that you would do all that was consistent, but we did not hear from you further. Clingman refunded the money, or certificates, which they had improperly obtained from the Treasury, the action was withdrawn, and he was discharged to-day. While the matter was pending I had several conversations with Clingman, and he frequently dropped hints to the effect that Reynolds had it in his power materially to injure the Secretary of the Treasury, as he knew of several very improper transactions of his. At first I paid no attention to these hints, but when he went so far as to assert that Reynolds had it in his power to hang the Secretary of the Treasury, that the latter was deeply concerned in speculation with Duer, and had frequently advanced him—Reynolds, I mean—money with which to speculate, then I conceived it my duty to take some sort of action, and yesterday communicated with Mr. Monroe and Mr. Venable. They went at once to call on Reynolds—whom I privately believe to be a rascal, sir—and he asserted that he was kept in prison by your connivance, as you feared him; and promised to put us in possession of the entire facts this morning. When we returned at the hour appointed, he had absconded, having received his discharge. We then went to his house and saw his wife, who asserted, after some circumlocution, that you had been concerned in speculations with her husband, that at your request she had burnt most of the letters you had written to herself and her husband, and that all were in a disguised hand—like these few which she had preserved. You will admit that it is a very serious charge, sir, and that we should have been justified in going directly to the President. But we thought that in case there might be an explanation—"

"Oh, there is an explanation," said Hamilton, with a sneer. "You shall have it at my pleasure. I see that these notes implicate me to the extent of eleven hundred dollars. Strange, that a rapacious Secretary of the Treasury, handling millions, and speculating wildly with a friend of large resources, should have descended to such small play as this. More especially strange that he should have deliberately placed himself in the power of such a rascal as this Reynolds—who seems to impress every one he meets with his blackguardism—and communicated with him freely on paper; you will have observed that I acknowledged these notes without hesitation. What a clumsy knave you must think me. I resent the imputation. Perhaps you have noticed that in one of these notes I state that on my honour I cannot accommodate him with the three hundred dollars he demands, because it is quite out of my power to furnish it. Odd, that a thieving Secretary, engaged in riotous speculation, could not lay his hand on three hundred dollars, especially if it were necessary to close this rascal's mouth. I doubt, gentlemen, if you will be able to convince the country that I am a fool. Nevertheless, I recognize that this accusation must be met by controverting proof; and if you will do me the honour to call at my house to-night at nine o'clock, I shall, in the presence of the Comptroller of the Treasury, furnish these proofs."

He rose, and the others pushed back their chairs and departed hastily. Muhlenberg's red face wore a look of relief, but Monroe scowled. Neither had failed to be impressed by the Secretary's manner, and the Speaker of the House, ashamed of his part in the business, would gladly have listened to an immediate vindication.

Hamilton sat motionless for some moments, the blood returning to his face, for he was seething with fury and disgust.

"The hounds!" he said aloud, then again and again. He was alone, and he never had conquered his youthful habit of muttering to himself. "I can see Monroe leaping, not walking, to the jail, the moment he learned of a chance to incriminate me. The heels at the end of those long legs must have beaten the powder from his queue. And this is what a man is to expect so long as he remains in public life—if he succeeds. He resigns a large income, reduces his family almost to poverty, works himself half to death, rescues the country from contempt, launches it upon the sea of prosperity; and his public rewards are more than counterbalanced by the persecutions of his enemies. I have been on the defensive from the moment I entered public life. Scarcely a week but I have been obliged to parry some poisoned arrow or pluck it out and cauterize. The dreams of my youth! They never soared so high as my present attainment, but neither did they include this constant struggle with the vilest manifestations of which the human nature is capable." He brought his fist down on the table. "I am a match for all of them," he exclaimed. "But their arrows rankle, for I am human. They have poisoned every hour of victory."

He caught up his hat and went out into the air. The solace of Mrs. Croix in his blacker moods occurred to him; and he walked down Chestnut Street as rapidly as he could, in the crowd, lifting his hat now and again to cool his head in the frosty air. It was a brilliant winter's day; drifts of snow hid the dead animals and the garbage in the streets; and all the world was out for Christmas shopping. As it was one of the seasons for display, everybody was in his best. The women wore bright-coloured taffetas or velvets, over hoops flattened before and behind, muskmelon bonnets or towering hats. They whisked their gowns about, that their satin petticoats be not overlooked. The men wore the cocked hat, heavily laced, and a long coat, usually of light-coloured cloth, with a diminutive cape, the silver buttons engraved with initials or crest. Their small clothes were very short, but heavy striped stockings protected their legs; on their feet were pointed shoes, with immense silver buckles. Hamilton was dressed with his usual exquisite care, his cuffs carefully leaded. But his appearance interested him little to-day. For the moment, however, he forgot his private annoyance in the portent on every side of him. Few of the seekers after gifts had entered the shops. They blocked the pavements, even the street, talking excitedly of the news of the day before. Fully half the throng sported the tri-coloured cockade, the air hissed with "Citizen," "Citess," or rang with a volley of "Ca ira! Ca ira!"

Hamilton set his teeth. "It is the next nightmare," he thought. "The Cabinet is quiet at present—Jefferson, mortified and beaten, is coaxing back his courage for a final spring. When the time comes to determine our attitude there will be Hell, nothing less." But his nostrils quivered. He might rebel at poisoned arrows, but he revelled in the fight that involved the triumph of a policy.

His mind was abstracted, the blood was still in his brain as he entered Mrs. Croix's drawing-room. For a moment he had a confused idea that he had blundered into a shop. The chairs, the sofas, the floor, were covered with garments and stuffs of every hue. Hats and bonnets were perched on every point. Never had he seen so much gorgeous raiment in one space before. There were brocades, taffetas, satins, lutestrings, laces, feathers, fans, underwear like mist. While he was staring about him in bewilderment, Mrs. Croix came running in from her bedroom. Her hair was down and tangled, her dressing sacque half off, her face flushed, her eyes sparkling. She looked half wanton, half like a giddy girl darting about among her first trunks.

"Hamilton!" she cried. "Hamilton!" She flew at him much as his children did when excited. "Look! Look! Look! Is this not magnificent? This is the happiest day of my life!"

"Indeed? Are you about to set up a shop?"

"A shop? I am about to deck myself once more in the raiment that I love. Have I not drooped in weeds long enough, sir? I am going to be beautiful again! I am going to wear all those lovely things—all! all! And I am going to Lady Washington's to-morrow night. Mrs. Knox will take me. But I vow I do not care half so much for that as for my beautiful things. They arrived by the London packet yesterday, but have only now been delivered. I ordered them long since, and hardly could control my impatience till they came. I am so happy! I feel like a bird that has been plucked for years."

Hamilton looked at her in amazement, and despair. More than once he had caught a glimpse of the frivolous side of her nature, but that it could spread and control her he never had imagined. Her intelligence, her passions, her inherited and accumulated wisdom, were crowded into some submerged cell. There was nothing in her at the present moment for him, and he turned on his heel without a word and left the house. She rapped sharply on the window as he passed, but he did not look up. He was filled with that unreasoning anger peculiar to man when woman for once has failed to respond. He consigned her and her clothes to the devil, and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to one. His dinner hour was two o'clock. He would go home to his wife, where he should have gone in the first place. She never had failed him, or if she had he could not recall the occasion. Her little dark face rose before him, innocent and adorable. He could not tell her of the cause of his annoyance,—it suddenly occurred to him that the less of that matter confided to Mrs. Croix the better,—but then he never worried her with his troubles. He would merely go and bask in her presence for an hour, confess to a headache, and receive her sweet ministrations.

As he entered his own house, and, relieved of his coat and hat by the waiting black, ran up the stair, he thought he heard a soft babble of voices. Knowing that his wife would, if he desired it, dismiss at once any company she might have, he knocked confidently at her door and entered. For a moment he felt inclined to rub his eyes, and wondered if he were the victim of delirium. The bed was covered with bandboxes, the sofa with new frocks. Betsey was sitting before the mirror, trying on a cap, and her sisters, Peggy and Cornelia, were clapping their hands. Angelica was perched on the back of a chair, her eyes twice their natural size, Hamilton attempted instant retreat, but Betsey saw his reflection in the mirror.

"You?" she cried. "What a surprise and pleasure. Come here, sir, at once."

Meanwhile his two sisters-in-law, whose expected visit he had quite forgotten, ran forward and kissed him effusively. With the desire in his heart to rend the Universe in twain he went forward and smiled down into his wife's eager face.

"Angelica has sent me so many things!" she exclaimed. Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling. She looked sixteen. "And this cap is the most bewitching of all. You came just at the right moment; it is quite singular. Read—".

She thrust a letter from Mrs. Church into his hand, and he read where his wife pointed. "Someone who loves you will tell you if it is becoming or not." And on the following page. "Kiss my saucy Brother for me. I call him my Brother with an air of pride. And tell him, Il est l'homme le plus aimable du monde."

"It is charming," said Hamilton, pinching his wife's chin. "It is like a frame. You never looked half so sweet."

Betsey cooed with delight. Hamilton, having done his duty, was about to retire in good order, when he met his little daughter's eyes. They had dismissed the wonderful cap and were fixed on him with an expression that gave him a sudden thrill. It was not the first time he had seen in Angelica so strong a resemblance to his mother that he half believed some fragment of Rachael Levine had come back to him. Her eyes were dark, but she had a mane of reddish fair hair, and a skin as white as porcelain, a long sensitive nose, and a full mobile mouth. She had none of his mother's vitality and dash, however. She was delicate and rather shrinking, and he knew that Rachael at her age must have been a marvel of mental and physical energy. It was only occasionally, when he turned suddenly and caught Angelica staring at him, that he experienced the odd sensation of meeting his mother's eyes, informed, moreover, with an expression of penetrating comprehension—an expression he recalled without effort. The child idolized him. She sat outside his study while he wrote, crawling in between the legs of anyone who opened the door? to sit at his feet; or, if he dismissed her, in another part of the room until he left it. She watched for his daily returns, and usually greeted him from the banister post. Amiable, intelligent, pretty, affectionate, and already putting forth the tender leaves of a great gift, her father thought her quite perfect, and they had long conversations whenever he was at leisure in his home. She demanded a great deal of petting, and he was always ready to humour her, the more as she was the only girl, and the one quiet member of his little family—although she had been known to use her fists upon occasion. Her prettiness and intelligence delighted him, her affection was one of the deepest pleasures of his life, and he was thankful for the return to him of his mother's beautiful and singular features. To-day the resemblance was so striking that he contracted his eyelids. Angelica straightened herself, gave a spring, and alighted on his chest.

"Take me downstairs and talk to me," she commanded. "'Tis nearly an hour to dinner."

Hamilton swung her to his shoulder, and went downstairs. On the way he laughed out loud. The past half-hour tossed itself into the foreground of his mind, clad in the skirts of high comedy. Tragedy fled. The burden in his breast went with it. Far be it from him to cherish a grudge against the sex that so often reduced the trials of public life to insignificance. Women were delicious irresponsible beings; man was an ingrate to take their shortcomings seriously.

"Why do you laugh?" asked his daughter, whose arm nearly strangled him. "You were very angry when you came into mamma's room."

"Indeed?" said Hamilton, nettled. "Was I not smiling?"

"Yes, sir; but you often smile when you would like to run the carving-knife into somebody."

They had reached the library. Hamilton sat the child on the edge of his table and took a chair closely facing her. "What do you mean, you little witch?" he demanded. "I am always happy when I am at home."

"Almost always. Sometimes you are very angry, and sometimes you are sad. Why do you pretend? Why don't you tell us?"

"Well," said Hamilton, with some confusion. "I love you all very much, you see, and you do make me happy—why should I worry you?"

"I should feel better if you told me—right out. It gives me a pain here."

She laid her hand to her head, and Hamilton stared at her in deepening perplexity. Another child—anything feminine, at least—would have indicated her heart as the citadel of sorrow. "Why there?" he asked. "Do you mean a pain?"

"Yes, a pain, but not so bad as when I am in Albany or Saratoga and you are here. Then I worry all the time."

"Do you mean that you are ever unhappy?"

"I am unhappy whenever you are, or I am afraid that you are. I know that you are very big and the cleverest man in the world, and that I am too little to do you any good, and I don't know why I worry when I am away." "But, my dear child, what in Heaven's name do you mean? Have you ever spoken to your mother of this?"

Angelica shook her head. Her eyes grew larger and wiser. "No; I should only worry Betsey, and she is always happy. She is not clever like you and me."

Hamilton rose abruptly and walked to the window. When he had composed his features he returned. "You must not criticise your mother in that way, my dear. She is a very clever little woman, indeed."

Angelica nodded. "If she were clever, you would not say 'little.' Nobody says that you are a very clever little man. When I'm big, I'll not be called little, either. I love our dear Queen Bess, but I'm all yours. Why were you so angry to-day?"

"I couldn't possibly tell you," replied her father, turning cold. "You must not ask too many questions; but I am very grateful for your sympathy. You are my dear little girl, and you make me love you more and more, daily."

"And will you tell me whenever you are not feeling like what you are making the rest believe?"

"If it will make you any happier, I will whisper it into your pink little ear. But I think I should be a very bad father to make you unhappy."

"I told you, sir, that I am more unhappy when I imagine things. It is just like a knife," and again she pointed to her head.

Hamilton turned pale. "You are too young to have headaches," he said. "Perhaps you have been studying too hard. I am so ambitious for my children; but the boys have taken to books as they have to kites and fisticuffs. I should have remembered that girls—" His memory gave up the stories of his mother's precocity. But this child, who was so startlingly like the dead woman, was far less fitted to carry such burdens. So sensitive an intelligence in so frail a body might suddenly flame too high and fall to ashes. He resolved to place her in classes of other little girls at once, and to keep her in the fields as much as possible. None knew better than he how close the highly strung unresting brain could press to madness. He had acquired a superhuman control over his. If this girl's brain had come out of his own, it must be closely watched. She had not inherited his high light spirits, but the melancholy which had lain at the foundations of his mother's nature; she would require the most persistent guarding. He took her face between his hands and kissed it many times.

"Very well," he said, "we will have our little secrets. I will tell you when I am disturbed, and you will sit close beside me with your doll until I feel better. But remember, I expect as much confidence in return. You will never have a care nor a terror nor an annoyance that you will not confide it to me directly."

She nodded. "I'm always telling you things to myself. And I won't cry any more in the night, when I think you have felt badly and could not tell anyone. It will all go away if you talk to me about it," she added confidently.

Hamilton swung her to his shoulder again and started for the dining room.

"The child is uncanny," he thought. "Can there be anything in that old theory that tormented and erring souls come back to make their last expiation in children? That means early death!" He dismissed the thought promptly.

XXXI

After dinner he called on Oliver Wolcott, the Comptroller, one of his closest friends, and related the scene of the morning, adding the explanation. Wolcott was a Puritan, and did not approve of the marital digressions of his friends. But in this case the offence was so much less than the accusation that he listened with frequent ejaculations of content. He agreed at once to call at Hamilton's house at eight o'clock, look over the papers, and read them aloud when the trio arrived.

"And may the devil damn them," he added. "It will be one of the keenest pleasures of my life to confound them. The unpatriotic villains! They know that in disgracing you they would discredit the United States, and in their hearts they know that your measures are the only wheels for this country to run on; but to their party spite they would sacrifice everything. I'll be there."

And when the men called that night at nine o'clock, he read them the correspondence from beginning to end—Reynold's letters, and those of the woman. More than once Muhlenberg begged him to desist, but he was merciless. When he had finished, Hamilton explained that he had disguised his handwriting lest the man forge or make other use of it.

The three rose as soon as the ordeal was over. "It is no use for me to attempt to express my regret or my humiliation," said Muhlenberg, "I shall be ashamed of this as long as I live."

"I feel like an ass and a spy," exclaimed Venable. "I heartily beg your pardon, sir."

"Your mistake was justifiable. Are you satisfied?"

"More than satisfied."

Hamilton turned to Monroe.

"I made a mistake," said the Senator from Virginia. "I beg your pardon."

"And I shall hear no more of this?"

He received the solemn promise of each, then let them go. But he locked the letters carefully in their drawer again.

"Are you going to keep those things?" asked Wolcott. "It must have made you sick to listen to them."

"It did. Perhaps I shall keep them for penance, perhaps because I do not trust Monroe."

XXXII

Hamilton was not long kept in ignorance of the next tactics of his enemies. They made their deadliest assault soon after Christmas. Immediately upon the assembling of Congress it was suggested that the Secretary of the Treasury be asked to furnish a plan for reducing the public debt. Madison arose and fired the first gun. What Congress wanted was not a plan, but a statement of the national finances. The Federalists replied that the information would come in due course, and that the House was in duty bound to ask the Secretary to furnish a scheme. The Republicans, led by Madison, protested that already too much power had been invested in the Secretary of the Treasury, that it had exceeded constitutional limits. Moreover, he overwhelmed them with volumes, deliberately calculated to confuse their understandings. One Giles, who did the dirty work of the party, announced that the Secretary was not fit to make plans, and added the numerous and familiar denunciations. But the Republicans were outvoted, and the suggestions were called for. Hamilton furnished them immediately. His plan to reduce the debt was met by so strenuous an opposition from the Republicans that it was defeated, and by the party which had been most persistent in their detestation of the obnoxious burden. Rather than add to the laurels of Hamilton, they would shoulder it with equanimity. But this defeat was but an incident. The Secretary of the Treasury, as the result of a series of resolutions, was bidden to lay before Congress an account of the moneys borrowed at Antwerp and Amsterdam; the President to furnish a statement of the loans made by his authority, their terms, what use had been made of them, how large was the balance; the chiefs of departments to make a return of the persons employed and their salaries. Hamilton, by this time, was fully alive to the fact that he was about to be subjected to fresh persecution, and the agility of his enemies could not keep pace with his. He furnished the House with an itemized list—which it took the Committee days to plod through—of his bookkeepers, clerks, porters, and charwomen, and the varying emoluments they had received since the Department was organized, three years and a half before. He further informed them that the net yield of the foreign loan was eighteen millions six hundred and seventy-eight thousand florins, that the loans were six in number, that three bore five per cent interest, two four and a half, and one four per cent The enemy was disconcerted but not discouraged. Five fresh resolutions were moved almost immediately. Impartial historians have agreed that Jefferson suggested these shameful resolutions, and that Madison drew them up. Giles brought them forward. In a vociferous speech he asserted that no man could understand the Secretary's report, that his methods and processes were clothed in a suspicious obscurity. It was his painful duty to move the adoption of the following resolutions: That copies of the papers authorizing the foreign loans should be made; that the names of the persons to whom and by whom the French debt had been paid be sent to Congress; that a statement of the balances between the United States and the Bank be made; that an account of the sinking-fund be rendered, how much money had come into it and where from, how much had been used for the purchase of the debt and where the rest was deposited. The fifth demanded an account of the unexpended revenue at the close of the preceding year. Giles charged that a serious discrepancy existed between the report of the Secretary and the books of the Bank—not less than a million and a half. It had been the purpose of Jefferson and Madison to bring forward the resolutions with an air of comparative innocence. But the vanity of Giles carried him away, and his speech informed Congress, and very shortly the country, that the honesty of the Secretary of the Treasury had been impeached, and that he was called upon to vindicate himself.

In crises Hamilton never lost his temper. The greater the provocation, as the greater the danger, the colder and more impersonal he became. Nor was it in his direct impatient nature to seek to delay an evil moment any more than it was to protect himself behind what the American of to-day calls "bluff." In this, the severest trial of his public career, he did not hesitate a moment for irritation or protest. He called upon his Department to assist him, and with them he worked day and night, gathering, arranging, elaborating all the information demanded by Congress. When he was not directing his subordinates, he was shut up in his library preparing his statements and replies. His meals were taken to him; his family did not see him for weeks, except as he passed them on his way to or from the front door. He sent in report after report to Congress with a celerity that shattered his health, but kept his enemies on the jump, and worked them half to death. The mass of manuscript he sent would have furnished a modest bookstore, and the subjects and accounts with which he was so familiar drove Madison and others, too opposed to finance to master the maze of it, close upon the borders of frenzy. It had been their uncommunicated policy to carry the matter over to the next session, but Hamilton was determined to have done with them by adjournment.

And in the midst of this tremendous pressure arrived George Washington Lafayette.

It was on the first Saturday of his retirement into the deep obscurity of his library, with orders that no one knock under penalty of driving him from the house, that Hamilton, opening the door suddenly with intent to make a dash for his office, nearly fell over Angelica. She was standing just in front of the door, and her face was haggard.

"How long have you been here?" demanded her father.

"Three hours, sir."

"Three! Have you stood all that time?"

Angelica nodded. She was determined not to cry, but she was wise enough not to tax the muscles of her throat.

Hamilton hesitated. If the child fidgeted, she would distract his attention, great as were his powers of concentration; but another searching of her eyes decided him.

"Very well," he said. "Go in, but mind you imagine that you are a mouse, or you will have to leave."

When he returned, she was sitting in a low chair by his desk, almost rigid. She had neither doll nor book. "This will never do," he thought. "What on earth shall I do with the child?" His eye fell upon the chaos of his manuscript. He gathered it up and threw it on the sofa. "There," he said, "arrange that according to the numbers, and come here every five minutes for more."

And Angelica spent two hours of every day in the library, useful and happy.

One day Hamilton was obliged to attend a Cabinet meeting, and to spend several hours at his office just after. Returning home in the early winter dusk, he saw two small white faces pressed against the hall window. One of them was Angelica's, the other he had never seen. As he entered, his daughter fell upon him.

"This is George Washington Lafayette," she announced breathlessly. "He came to-day, and he doesn't speak any English, and he won't go near Betsey or anyone but me, and he won't eat, and I know he's miserable and wretched, only he won't cry. His tutor's ill at the Inn."

The little Frenchman had retired to the drawing-room. Angelica darted after him and dragged him forward into the light. He was small for his age, but his features had the bold curious outline of his father's. He carried himself with dignity, but it was plain that he was terrified and unhappy. Hamilton gave him a warm embrace, and asked him several questions in French. The boy brightened at once, answered rapidly and intelligently, and took firm possession of his new friend's hand.

"I am more happy now," he announced. "I don't like the other people here, except this little girl, because they do not speak French, but you are a Frenchman, and I shall love you, as my father said I should—long ago! I will stay with you day and night."

"Oh, you will?" exclaimed Hamilton. "I am going to send you to school with my boys."

"Oh, not yet, sir! not yet!" cried the boy, shrilly. "I have seen so many strangers on that dreadful ship, and in France—we hid here, there—moving all the time. I wish to live with you and be your little boy."

"And so you shall, but I am uncommonly busy."

"He is a very quiet little boy," interposed Angelica, who was three years his junior. "He would not move if he sat in your room, and I will take him for a walk every day. He will die if he has to sit in a room by himself all day."

"I shall sleep with you, sir, I hope?" asked young Lafayette, eagerly. "I have thought all day of the dark of to-night. I have seen such terrible things, sir!"

"Good Heaven!" thought Hamilton, "is it not enough to be dry nurse to a nation?" But he could not refuse, and during the few hours he snatched for sleep he was half strangled. By day the boy sat quietly in a corner of the library, and studied the text-books his guardian bought him. Betsey did all she could to win him, but he had no faith in people who could not speak his language. Angelica, like all of Hamilton's children, knew something of French, and he liked her and accepted her motherly attentions; but Hamilton he adored. The moment his absorbed friend made for the front door he was after him, and Hamilton let him run at his heels, lest he get neither air nor exercise. He had no time at present to take him to call on his august godfather, and, in truth, he dreaded the prospect. Washington knew nothing of children, and his diminutive namesake would probably be terrified into spasms.

XXXIII

The three long and exhaustive reports, accounting honourably for every penny entrusted to the Secretary of the Treasury, and justifying every payment, measure, and investment, had gone to the Congress. Nine days later Giles brought forward nine resolutions of censure against the Secretary of the Treasury. But by this time Congress had made up its mind, and many of the Republicans were disgusted and humiliated. The Federalists were triumphant, and amused themselves with Giles, drawing him on, to confound him with ridicule and proof of the absurdity of his charges. Madison, desperate, lost his head and the respect of many of his colleagues, by asserting hysterically that the House was impotent to change the truth of the accusations, and that in the tribunal of public opinion the Secretary would be condemned. But Hamilton was triumphantly vindicated by Congress and the Nation at large. His house was in a state of siege for weeks from people of all parts of the country, come to congratulate him; his desk obliterated by letters he had no time to read. The Federals were jubilant. Their pride in Hamilton was so great that a proclamation from above would not have disturbed their faith, and they were merciless to the discomfited enemy. In truth, the Virginian trio and their close adherents were mortified and confounded. In their hearts they had not believed Hamilton guilty of dishonesty, but they had been confident that his affairs were in chaos, that large sums must have escaped, not conceiving that any mortal could at the same time create gigantic schemes, and be as methodical as a department clerk in every detail of his great office.

Although Hamilton had commanded his brain to dwell exclusively upon the vindication and its means, the deeps below were bitter and hot. When the work was over, and exhausted in body and mind he went about his duties mechanically, or attempted to find distraction in his family, he felt as if the abundant humanity in him were curdled; and he longed for a war, that he might go out and kill somebody. It was small compensation that the Virginian ring were grinding their teeth, and shivering under daily shafts of humiliation and ridicule. So terrible was the position in which they had placed him, so immeasurably had they added to the sum of his contempt for human kind, that individually they occupied, for a time, but a corner of his thought.

His only solace during this trial had been Washington; he had been too busy and too frozen for Mrs. Croix. But that closest of his friends, although forced by his high office to a position of stern neutrality, did all he could in private to convince Hamilton of his unaltered affection and regard. As soon as the vindication was complete he fell into the habit of finishing his daily walk with an hour in Hamilton's library. But if his visits were a pleasure to his Secretary, they were wretchedness unleavened for two other members of the family. The President never failed to ask for Angelica and George Washington Lafayette; and upon their prompt but unwilling advent he would solemnly place one on either knee, where they remained for perhaps half an hour in awe-stricken misery. They had orders to show no distress, and they behaved admirably; but although young Lafayette was rapidly learning English, the fact did not lessen his fear of this enormous man, who spoke so kindly, and looked as if he could have silenced the Terror with the awful majesty of his presence. Angelica, being an independent little American, was less overwhelmed, but she was often on the verge of hysterics. It was the short session of Congress, and in March, George, with scalding but dignified tears, accompanied his godfather to Mount Vernon, whence he wrote Hamilton a daily letter of lament, until habit tempered his awe; from that point he passed with Gallic bounds into an ardent affection for the great man, who, if of an unearthly dignity, was always kind, and, when relieved of the cares of State, uniformly genial.

The respite in Philadelphia was brief. In April came the first news of the beheading of the French king; and the same tardy packets brought word that France was at war with England and Spain. Hamilton sent the news, express haste, to Washington, and dismissed every consideration from his brain but the terrible crisis forced upon the United States, and the proper measures to save her from shipwreck. In the early stages of the French Revolution he had predicted the developments with such accuracy to Henry Walter Livingston that the new Secretary of Legation, upon his arrival in Paris, told Gouverneur Morris—United States minister since 1792—that to his astonishment he found nothing to surprise him. Therefore the prophet had long been determined upon the policy the United States should pursue when this crisis shot out of the eastern horizon; he had now but to formulate it in such a manner that every point could be grasped at once by the Cabinet, and acted upon. When Washington arrived in Philadelphia and summoned his advisers, Hamilton presented twelve questions for discussion, the most pressing of which were: Shall a proclamation issue for the purpose of preventing interferences of the citizens of the United States in the war between France and Great Britain, etc.? Shall it contain a declaration of neutrality? Shall a minister from this Republic of France be received? Jefferson was in a far less enviable position than Hamilton. He neither wished for war, nor dared he machinate for it; but with all his democratic soul he loved the cause which was convulsing the world from its ferocious centre in France. Had Jefferson come of stout yeoman stock, like John Adams, or of a long line of patrician ancestors, like Hamilton, and, to a lesser degree, like Washington, he might, judging from certain of his tastes, and his love of power, have become, or been, as aristocratic in habit and spirit as were most men of his wealth, position, and importance in the young country. But the two extremes met in his blood. The plebeianism of his father showed itself in the ungainly shell, in the indifference to personal cleanliness, and in the mongrel spirit which drove him to acts of physical cowardice for which his apologists blush. But his mother had belonged to the aristocracy of Virginia, and this knowledge induced a sullen resentment that he should be so unlike her kind, so different in appearance from the courtly men of his State. Little was wanting to accelerate his natural desire to level his country to a plane upon which with his gifts he easily could loom as a being of superior mould; but when a British sovereign publicly turned his back upon him, and the English court, delighted with its cue, treated him with an unbearable insolence, nothing more was needed to start the torrent of his hate against all who stood for aristocracy. Democracy rampant on all sides of him, during his sojourn in France, found in him not only an ardent sympathizer, but a passionate advocate. He quite overlooked the fact that he failed to persuade the country of his enthusiasm to accord the United States fair commercial treatment: it embodied and demonstrated his ideal of liberty, equality, fraternity, and he was its most devoted friend, unresting until he had insinuated his own admiration into the minds of his followers in America, and made Jacobinism a party issue.

To turn his back upon France, therefore, to help her neither in money nor moral support, was a policy he had no intention to pursue, could he avoid it; but knowing his weakness in the Cabinet, he suggested an extra session of Congress. It would then be an easy matter to throw the responsibility upon his followers in both Houses, while he stood to the country as working consistently and harmoniously in his great office.

But Hamilton, who understood him thoroughly, would listen to no proposition which would involve weeks of delay, inflame further the public mind, and give Jefferson an opportunity to make political capital. Moreover, he would have no such confession of weakness go out from the Administration. He prevailed, and in that first meeting Jefferson was forced to consent also to the immediate issue of a proclamation to the people. He argued with such fervour, however, against the use of the word "neutrality," declaring that the Executive had no constitutional authority so far to commit the people, that Washington, to humour him, omitted the word, while declaring authoritatively for the substance. It was also agreed that Genet, the new Minister from France, sent by the Revolutionists to succeed M. Ternant, should be received. The first meeting closed tranquilly, for both Hamilton and Jefferson had tacitly admitted that it was no time for personal recrimination.

But the Cabinet met daily, and other subjects, notably Hamilton's contention that their treaties made with a proper French government no longer existed, came up for elaborate discussion; Hamilton had an exhaustive report prepared on each of them. The two Secretaries, who hated each other as two men hardly have hated before or since, and who realized that they had met for their final engagement in official life, soon dismissed any pretence at concord, and wrangled habitually—with cutting sarcasm or crushing force on Hamilton's part, with mild but deadly venom on Jefferson's; until he too was maddened by a jagged dart which momentarily routed his tender regard for his person. Jefferson wrenched one victory from the Cabinet despite Hamilton's determined opposition: Genet's reception should be absolute. But on all other important points the Secretary of the Treasury scored, and stone by stone built up the great policy of neutrality which prevailed until the year 1898; impressed into the Government the "Doctrine"—he had formulated it in "The Federalist"—which was to immortalize the name of a man who created nothing. Hamilton, with all the energy and obstinacy of his nature, was resolved that the United States should not have so much as a set-back for the sake of a country whose excesses filled him with horror, much less run the risk of being sucked into the whirlpool of Europe; and he watched every move Jefferson made, lest his secret sympathies commit the country. When, after a triumphal procession through miles of thoughtless enthusiasts, who remembered only the services of France, forgot that their friends had been confined entirely to the royalty and aristocracy that the mob was murdering, and were intoxicated by the extreme democracy of the famous Secretary of State, Genet arrived in Philadelphia, inflated and bumptious, his brain half crazed by the nervous excitement of the past two years, and was received with frigid politeness by Washington, Hamilton was not long discovering that Jefferson was in secret sympathy and intercourse with this dangerous fire-brand. The news had preceded and followed the new minister that he had been distributing blank commissions to all who would fit out privateers to prey upon British commerce, opening headquarters for the enlistment of American sailors into the French service, and constituting French consuls courts of admiralty for the trial and condemnation of prizes brought in by French privateers.

As soon as he arrived in Philadelphia he demanded of Hamilton the arrears of the French debt, which the Secretary had refused to pay until there was a stable government in France to receive it. Hamilton laughed, locked the doors of the Treasury, and put the key in his pocket. To Genet's excited volubility and pertinacity he paid as little attention as to Jefferson's arguments. Moreover, he reversed all Citizen Genet's performances in the South; and in course of time, even the captured British ships, to the wrath and disgust of Jefferson, were returned to their owners.

Freneau's Gazette supported the Secretary of State with the desperation of an expiring cause; in this great final battle, were Jefferson driven from the Cabinet, his faithful organ must scurry to the limbo of its kind. It assailed the Administration for ingratitude and meanness, then turned its attention almost exclusively to the Secretary of the Treasury. It accused him of abstracting the moneys due to France, of plundering the industrious farmer with the Excise Law, destroying the morals of the people by Custom House duties; resurrected the old discrimination cry and asserted vehemently that he, and he alone, had robbed the poor soldiers. It raked every accusation, past and present, from its pigeon holes. Jefferson, on the other hand, was held up as a model of the disinterested statesman, combining virtues before which those falsely attributed to Washington paled and expired; and as the only man fit to fill the Executive Chair. Genet accepted all this as gospel, fortunately, perhaps, for the country; for his own excesses and impudence, his final threat to appeal from the President to the people, ruined him with the cooling heads of the Republican party, and finally lost him even the support of Jefferson.

Meanwhile, after stormy meetings of the Cabinet, Hamilton, in the peace of his library, with Angelica sorting his pages,—until she went to the North,—had written a series of papers defending the proclamation. They were so able and convincing, so demonstrable of the treasonable efforts of the enemy to undermine the influence of the Administration, so cool and so brilliant an exposition of the rights and powers of the Executive, that on July 7th Jefferson wrote to Madison: "For God's sake, my dear sir, take up your pen. Select the most striking heresies, and cut him to pieces in the face of the public."

Madison hastened to obey his chief in a series of papers which tickled the literary nerve, but failed to convince. That the laurels were to Hamilton was another bitter pill which Jefferson was forced to swallow. Nevertheless, Hamilton, despite his victories, felt anything but amiable. He was so exhausted that he was on the verge of a collapse, and triumphs were drab under the daily harassment of Jefferson, Genet, and Freneau. Matters came to a climax one day in August, shortly before the outbreak of yellow fever.

XXXIV

Hamilton laid down a copy of Freneau's Gazette, whose editorial columns were devoted, as usual, to persuading the people of the United States that they were miserable, and that they owed their misery to the Secretary of the Treasury. It also contained a shameful assault upon the President. As he lifted another paper from the pile on his library table, his eyes fell on the following address to himself:—

O votary of despotism! O abettor of Carthaginian faith! Blush! Can you for a moment suppose that the hearts of the yeomanry of America are becoming chilled and insensible to the feelings of insulted humanity like your own? Can you think that gratitude, the most endearing disposition of the human heart, is to be argued away by your dry sophistry? Do you suppose the people of the United States prudently thumb over Vattel and Pufendorf to ascertain the sum and substance of their obligations to their generous brethren, the French? No! no! Each individual will lay his hand on his heart and find the amount there. He will find that manly glow, both of gratitude and love, which animated his breast when assisted by this generous people in establishing his own liberty and shaking off the yoke of British despotism!

In the Aurora he was denounced as the foe of France and the friend of Great Britain and Spain, the high priest of tyranny, the bitterest enemy of the immortal French trio, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite; the subtle and Machiavellian adviser of Washington, who, relieved of this pernicious influence, would acknowledge the debts of gratitude and follow the will of the American people.

"Are they mad?" he thought, flinging the entire pile into the waste-basket. "Or are they merely so eager for power and our ruin that they are indifferent to the fact that the Administration, and the foundations upon which it stands, never has needed the support of the people more than now? Can only the party in power afford to be patriotic? What a spectacle is this, that I, an alien born, am wearing out my life and sacrificing my character, to save from themselves a people who pant for my ruin! Has the game been worth the candle? Debt, my family crowded into a house not half large enough to hold them, my health almost gone, my reputation, in spite of repeated vindications, undermined by daily assault—for the fools of the world believe what they are told, and I cannot compromise my dignity by replying to such attacks as these; above all, a sickening and constant disgust for life and human nature! Is the game worth the candle? Had I remained at the bar, I should have given my family abundance by now; with only the kind and quantity of enemies that stimulate. It is only politics that rouse the hellish depths in the human heart. It is true that I have saved the country, made it prosperous, happy, and honoured. But what guaranty have I that this state will last beyond the administration of Washington? With the Republicans in power the whole edifice may be swept away, the country in a worse plight than before, and the author of its brief prosperity forgotten with his works. I shall have lived in vain, and leave my sons to be educated, my family to be supported, by my father-in-law."

He was in no mood to see the reverse side of the picture; and indeed his cares were so many and overwhelming at this time that it is little wonder he believed he had lost for ever the gay buoyancy of his spirits. In addition to the predominating trials, financial matters were demanding all the leisure he should have given to rest, heavy failures in England having seriously affected the money concerns of the United States; and the rebellions in the West against the Excise Law were sounding a new alarm. Moreover, his constant efforts to obtain Duer's release were unavailing; he could get no word of Lafayette; and the last packet had brought a rumour of the murder of Gouverneur Morris by the mob. Altogether, he may be excused for forgetting that he was still the most dazzling figure in America, in the full tide of actual success, and an object of terrified hatred to a powerful ring who could reach their zenith over his political corpse, and by no other means whatever.

He picked up his hat, and went forth reluctantly to a Cabinet meeting. It was early, and he saw Washington for a few moments alone in the library. The President was in a no more cheerful or amiable frame of mind than himself. His responsibilities in this terrible crisis wore on his spirits and temper; and the daily fear that his Secretaries would come to blows,—for Jefferson was in the worst humour of the quintette,—to say nothing of the assaults of the press, made him openly regret the hour he was persuaded into the Executive Chair. But his entire absence of party spirit, despite his secret sympathy with every measure of Hamilton's, his attitude of stern neutrality, never emerged more triumphantly from any trial of his public career; nor did he ever exhibit the magnanimity of his character more strikingly than in his undisturbed affection for Hamilton, while daily twitted with being the tool of his "scheming and ambitious Secretary."

Hamilton saw a copy of Freneau's Gazette in the waste-basket, but by common consent they ignored the subjects which would be unavoidable in a few moments, and spoke of the stifling heat, of the unhealthy state of Philadelphia, the menace of the San Domingo refugees pouring into the city, of the piles of putrid coffee and hides on the wharves at the foot of Mulberry Street, and of the carcasses of rotting hogs and horses which lay everywhere.

"Thank Heaven, we can get our women and children out of it," said the President. "And unless we can finish this business in another week, I shall take the Government to the country. I suppose we are entitled to escape with our lives, if they leave us nothing else."

They entered the Council Chamber and found the others in their accustomed seats. Jefferson's brow was corrugated, his weak and mincing mouth pressed out of shape. He had just finished reading the last of Hamilton's "No Jacobin" papers, published that morning, in which Genet's abominable breaches of decorum, violation of treaties, and deliberate insults to the Executive—and through him to the American people—had been set forth in so clear pointed and dispassionate a manner, that no thinking Republican who read could fail to be convinced of the falseness of his position in supporting this impudent and ridiculous Frenchman. Furthermore, the Secretary of State had been forced, through the exigencies of his position, to sign despatch after despatch, letter after letter, in violation of his private sympathies. He was feeling not only as angry as a cornered bull, but extremely virtuous. He hated what he firmly believed to be the cold and selfish policy of the Administration, as he hated every other policy it had executed; and the knowledge that he had sacrificed his personal feelings to save his country from discord, made him feel a far better man than the Secretary of the Treasury, who had a diabolical talent for getting his own way. He had some reason to be pleased with his conduct, and with his share in contributing to a series of measures which later on won for the Cabinet at that crucial period the encomiums of history; and when time had abated the fevers, Hamilton would have been the first to acknowledge that Jefferson not only was the brake which the Administration needed at that time, but that, owing to his popularity with the French and the masses of the United States, he reduced the danger of a popular uprising.

As Hamilton took his seat this morning, however, the blood was in his head, and he and Jefferson exchanged a glance of sullen hate which made Washington extend his long arms at once. All went well until the President, with a premonitory sigh, introduced the dynamic name, Genet. Hamilton forgot his debility, and was all mind, alert and energetic. Jefferson, who had come to hate Genet as an intolerable nuisance, would have been the first at another moment to counsel the demand for recall which he knew was now inevitable, but he was in too bad a humour to-day to concur in any measure agreeable to Hamilton.

The latter had replied promptly to Washington's remark that the time had come to take definite action with regard to the light-headed Frenchman, who continued to fit out and despatch privateers, and was convulsing the country generally.

"Pray send him home, bag and baggage, sir. He is not entitled to the dignity or consideration of the usual formalities. Moreover, he is the trigger of the United States so long as he remains at liberty in it. I estimate that there is a new Jacobin club formed daily. At any moment he may do something which will drive these fools, under their red caps and cockades, mad with admiration."

Jefferson brought his brows down to the root of his nose. "'Fools' is not the word for an honest enthusiasm for liberty, sir. I regret the present excitement—its manifestations at this moment—as much as anyone—"

"Indeed? I am amazed. Who, then, is responsible for them?"

"Not I, sir."

"Oh, let us have no more hypocrisy, at all events," said Hamilton, contemptuously. He had his wrath under control, but he suddenly determined to force the climax. "If you had employed your secret pen to better purpose, or not employed it at all, there would not be a Jacobin club in the country; this ridiculous Frenchman, unencouraged by your private sympathy, by your assurances of my inability to withhold the residue of the debt, would have calmed down long since. I accuse you here, deliberately and publicly, instead of writing private letters to the public, both because I have not your commanding talent for patient and devious ways, and because I wish you to declare, unequivocally, whether or not you purpose to continue this policy of obstruction. Time presses. We must act at once with regard to this Frenchman. Reserve subterfuge for some more opportune time, and let us know what you intend to do."

Jefferson looked with appeal at Washington, who usually interposed when his Secretaries arrived at personalities. But Washington, although his face was as immobile as stone, was so sick with anger and disgust over the whole situation, at what appeared to be the loss of the popular faith in himself, and the ridicule and abuse which had filled the columns of Freneau's paper that morning, that it was a relief to him to hear Hamilton explode.

"I repudiate every word you have said, sir," growled Jefferson. "More I will not say. As to Citizen Genet, with whom I have never had a word of private intercourse—" Here, even Washington lifted his head, and Hamilton laughed outright. Jefferson continued, determined upon martyrdom rather than rouse the terrible passions opposite: "As to Citizen Genet, if the Cabinet agree that it is best he leave this country. I shall demand that his recall be requested in the regular manner, in accordance with every principle of international courtesy. He may be imprudent, intoxicated with the glorious wine of liberty, but he is a Frenchman, a distinguished citizen of the great country that came so nobly to our rescue, and I protest against the base ingratitude which would fling insults in the teeth of an unfortunate people."

Hamilton threw back his head impatiently, and drummed with his fingers on the table. "The primary motive of France for the assistance she gave us was, obviously, to enfeeble a hated and powerful rival. A second motive was to extend her relations of commerce in the new world, and to acquire additional security for her possessions there, by forming a connection with this country when detached from Great Britain. To ascribe to her any other motives, to suppose that she was actuated by friendship toward us, is to be ignorant of the springs of action which invariably regulate the cabinets of princes. A despotic court aid a popular revolution through sympathy with its principles! For the matter of that, if you insist upon American statesmen being sentimental fools, the class that assisted us has been murdered by the rabble, which I refuse to recognize as France. And if it be your object to reduce this country to a similar position that you may climb over maddened brains to power—"

"Hear!" roared Jefferson, justly indignant. "I? Never a man loved peace as I do. My life has been hell since you have forced me into daily conflict, when, God knows, I perish with desire for the peace of my homely life in Virginia. Power! I scorn it, sir. I leave that to restless upstarts like yourself—"

He stopped, choking. Hamilton laughed contemptuously. "You are at work with your pen day and night, strengthening your misnamed party, and preparing the way by which you can lift yourself to a position where you can undo all that the party you hate, because it is composed of gentlemen, has accomplished for the honour and prosperity of your country. You are perfectly well aware that Genet was sent here to stir up a civil war, and embroil us with Europe at the same time, and you have secretly sympathized with and encouraged him. I cannot make up my mind whether you are a villain, or merely the victim of a sublimated and paradoxical imagination. But in either case, I wish to be placed on record as asserting that you are the worst enemy the United States is cursed with to-day."

This was too much for Jefferson, who had convinced himself that he was a high-minded and self-sacrificing statesman, stooping to devious ways for the common good. He forgot his physical fear, and shouted, pounding the table with his fist:—

"How dare you, sir? How dare you? It is you who are ruining, corrupting, and dishonouring this unhappy country, with your Banks, your devilish methods to cement the aristocracy, your abominable Excise Law—"

"Oh, but you have counteracted that so effectively! I was coming to that point. I conceived a measure by which to meet an imperative financial demand, and you, by your agents, by your secret machinations, have been the author of insurrection after insurrection, of the most flagrant breaches of the laws of your country. You have cost innumerable men, engaged in the pursuit of plain duty, their self-respect, and in several cases their lives. Another hideous problem is approaching—one, I am persuaded, that can be solved by arms and bloodshed alone; and to your pen, to your deliberate unsettling of men's minds, to the hatred you have inspired for the lawful government of this country, to you, and to you alone—"

"It's a lie! a lie!" shouted Jefferson. "You are speaking to an honourable man, sir! one who occupies a position in this country both by birth and breeding that you would give your soul—you adventurer!—to possess. Go back to your Islands! You have no place here among men of honourable birth. It's monstrous that this country should be ruled by a foreign bastard—!"

For a moment, every one present had a confused idea that a tornado was in the room. Then two doors were wrenched open, Jefferson fled down the street, with Randolph, bearing his hat, in pursuit; Knox was holding Hamilton firmly in his arms; and Washington, who had risen some moments since, and stood staring in grim disgust, awaiting the end, was divided between a desire to laugh, and to give way to a burst of fury himself.

Hamilton had made no attempt to struggle when Knox caught him, but he now withdrew from the relaxing arms, and the Secretary of War left the room hastily. Hamilton, to Washington's astonishment, flung himself into a chair, and dropped his head on his arms. In a moment, he began to sob convulsively. A malignant fever was breeding in his depressed system; the blood still surged in his head. He had a despairing sense that his character was in ruins; he was humiliated to his depths; he despised himself so bitterly that he forgot the existence of Jefferson.

The humour and anger died out of Washington. He went forward hastily and locked the door. Then he stooped over Hamilton, and pressed him closely in his arms.

"My dear boy!" he said huskily. "My dear boy!"

XXXV

That was the last of Hamilton's battles in the Cabinet. Jefferson resigned; although, in order that the Administration might, until the crisis was past, preserve an unbroken front to the country, he reluctantly consented to withhold his resignation until the assembling of Congress. He retired to Monticello, however; and apologized to the Secretary of the Treasury.

Hamilton, almost immediately, was taken down with yellow fever, which broke out suddenly and raged with a fearful violence. To the ordinary odours of carcasses and garbage, were added those of vinegar, tar, nitre, garlic, and gunpowder. Every disinfectant America had ever heard of was given a trial, and every man who possessed a shot-gun fired it all day and all night. The bells tolled incessantly. The din and the smells were hideous, the death carts rattled from dawn till dawn; many were left unburied in their houses for a week; hundreds died daily; and the city confessed itself helpless, although it cleaned the streets. Hamilton had a very light attack, but Dr. Stevens dropped in frequently to see him; he privately thought him of more importance than all Philadelphia.

Lying there and thinking of many things, too grateful for the rest to chafe at the imprisonment, and striving for peace with himself, Hamilton one day conceived the idea of immersing yellow-fever patients in ice-water. Microbes were undiscovered, but Hamilton, perhaps with a flashing glimpse of the truth, reasoned that if cold weather invariably routed the disease, a freezing of the infected blood should produce the same result. He succeeded in convincing Stevens, with the issue that when the scourge was over, the young West Indian doctor had so many cures to his credit, where all other physicians had failed, that the City Council presented him with a silver tankard, gratefully inscribed, and filled with golden coins. Hamilton's fecund brain, scattering its creations, made more than one reputation.

Meanwhile, he awoke one day to find Mrs. Croix sitting beside his bed. She had left town in June, and usually did not return until late in September. She wore a white frock and a blue sash, and looked like an angel about to do penance.

"I have come back to take care of the sick, including yourself," she announced, "I was born to be a nurse, and I felt that my place was here. I have come to see you first, and I shall call daily, but otherwise I am in Dr. Stevens's hands."

Hamilton stared at her. He was not surprised, for she was kind hearted in her erratic imperious fashion, and much beloved by the poor; nor was she afraid of anything under heaven. But she was the last person he had wished to see; she was for his triumphant hours, or his furious, not for helpless invalidism. He had longed consistently for his wife, and written to her by every packet-boat, lest she suspect his illness and return to the plague-stricken city. He was filled with a sudden resentment that any other woman should presume to fill her chair. To forget her under overwhelming provocation he had reconciled to his conscience with little difficulty, for his extenuations were many, and puritanism had not yet invaded the national character; but to permit another woman to ministrate to him when ill, he felt to be an unpardonable breach of his Eliza's rights, and his loyalty rebelled. So, although he treated Mrs. Croix with politeness while she remained, he gave orders to Dr. Stevens to keep her away upon any pretext he chose. "I am too nervous to be bothered with women," he added; and Stevens obeyed without comment.

Hamilton's convalescence was cheered by two facts: the revival of his spirits and equilibrium, and frequent assurances from his wife that for the first time in five years she was entirely well. She wrote that she had regained all her old colour, "spring," vivacity, and plumpness, and felt quite ten years younger. Hamilton was delighted; for her courage had so far exceeded her strength that he had often feared a collapse. Although she detested the sight of a pen, she was so elated with her recovered health that she wrote to him weekly. Suddenly, and without explanation, the letters stopped. Still, he was quite unprepared for what was to follow, and on the first of October, his health improved by a short sojourn in the country, he went to the wharf to meet the packet-boat which invariably brought his family; his pockets full of sweets, and not a misgiving in his mind.

As he stood on the wharf, watching the boat towed slowly to dock, his four oldest children suddenly appeared, waving their hats and shouting like young Indians. James, who was as broad as he was long, and was wedged firmly between Angelica and Philip lest he turn over, swelled a chorus which excited much amusement among by-standers. To Hamilton's surprise his wife did not occupy her usual place behind that enthusiastic group, but as the boat touched the pier, and all four precipitated themselves upon him at once,—the three oldest about his neck, and James upon his pockets,—he forgot her for the moment in the delight of seeing and embracing his children after three months of separation. He emerged from that wild greeting, dishevelled and breathless, only to disappear once more within six long arms and a circle of sunburned faces. Hamilton received from his children an almost frantic affection; indeed, few people merely liked him; it was either hate or a love which far transcended the bounds of such affection as the average mortal commands. The passion he inspired in his children cost one his life, another her reason, and left its indelible mark on a third; but for what they gave, they received an overflowing measure in return; no man was ever more passionately attached to his brood, nor took a greater delight in its society.

Suddenly, through the web of Angelica's flying locks, he saw that his wife had appeared on deck and was about to land. He disentangled himself hastily and went forward to greet her. In a flash he noted that she was prettier than ever, and that she was affected by something far more extraordinary than an increase of health. She threw back her head, and her black eyes flashed with anger as he approached with the assurance of thirteen years of connubial ownership; but she greeted him politely and took his arm. No explanation was possible there; and he escorted her and the children to the coach as quickly as possible. Philip, Angelica, and Alexander were sensible at once of the chasm yawning between the seats; they redoubled their attentions to their father, and regarded their mother with reproving and defiant eyes. Poor Betsey, conscious that she was entirely in the right, felt bitter and humiliated, and sought to find comfort in the indifference of James, who was engaged with a cornucopia and blind to the infelicity of his parents.

When they reached the house, Hamilton dismissed the children and opened the door of his library.

"Will you come in?" he said peremptorily.

Mrs. Hamilton entered, and sat down on a high-backed chair. She was very small, her little pigeon toes were several inches above the floor; but no judge on his bench ever looked so stern and so inexorable.

"Now," said Hamilton, who was cold from head to foot, for he had an awful misgiving, "let us have an explanation at once. This is our first serious misunderstanding, and you well know that I shall be in misery until it is over—"

"I have not the least intention of keeping you in suspense," interrupted Betsey, sarcastically. "I am too thankful that you did not happen to come to Saratoga when I was prostrated with misery. I have gone through everything,—every stage of wretchedness that the human heart is capable of,—but now, thank Heaven, I am filled with only a just indignation. Read that!"

She produced a letter from her reticule and flipped it at him. Even before he opened it he recognized the familiar handwriting, the profuse capitals, of Mrs. Reynolds. Fortunately, he made no comment, for the contents were utterly different from his quick anticipation. It contained a minute and circumstantial account of his visits during the past year to Mrs. Croix, with many other details, which, by spying and bribing, no doubt, she had managed to gather. Failing one revenge, the woman had resorted to another, and fearing that it might be lost among the abundant and surfeiting lies of the public press, she had aimed at what he held most dear. The letter was so minute and circumstantial that it would have convinced almost any woman.

There was but one thing for Hamilton to do, and he lied with his unsurpassable eloquence. When he paused tentatively, his wife remarked:—

"Alexander, you are a very great man, but you are a wretchedly poor liar. As Mr. Washington would say, your sincerity is one of the most valuable of your gifts, and without it you could not convince a child. As if this were not enough, only yesterday, on the boat, I overheard two of your intimate friends discussing this intrigue as a matter of course. There was not a word of censure or criticism; they were merely wondering when you would add to your enemies; for as this woman was desperately in love with you, she was bound to hate you as violently when you tired of her. I think men are horrors!" she burst out passionately. "When, unable to bear this terrible affliction any longer, and unwilling to worry my poor mother, I took that letter and my grief to my father—what do you suppose he said? After he had tried to convince me that the story was a base fabrication, and that an anonymous communication should be destroyed unread—as if any woman living would not read an anonymous letter!—he said, crossly, that women did not understand men and never made allowances for them; and he went on to make as many excuses for you as if he were defending himself; and then wound up by saying that he did not believe a word of it, and that the letter was written by someone you had flouted. But it seemed to me in those awful days that I was awake for the first time, that for the first time I understood you—and your horrid sex, in general—I do! I do!"

She looked so adorable with her flashing eyes, the hot colour in her cheek, and the new personality she exhibited, that Hamilton would have foregone a triumph over his enemies to kiss her. But he dared not make a false move, and he was terribly perplexed.

"I can only reiterate," he said, "that this letter is a lie from beginning to end. It is written by a woman, who, with her husband, has blackmailed me and jeopardized my reputation. I treated them as they deserved, and this is their next move. As for Mrs. Croix, I repeat, she is a most estimable person, whose brilliant wit and talent for politics draw all public men about her. There is hardly one among them who might not be victimized by a similar attack. I doubt if I have called half as often as many others. As for the friends whom you heard discussing my visits—you know the love of the human mind for scandal. Please be reasonable. You have made me the most wretched man on earth, I shall be unfit for public duty or anything else if you continue to treat me in this brutal manner. I hardly know you. No woman was ever more loved by her husband or received more devotion."

Betsey almost relented, he looked so miserable. But she replied firmly: "There is one condition I have a right to make. If you agree to it, I will consider if I can bring myself to believe your denial and your protestations. It is that you never enter Mrs. Croix's house again, nor see her willingly."

Hamilton knew what the promise would mean, but his mind worked with the rapidity of lightning in great crises, and never erred. He replied promptly:

"I will see her once, and once only—to give her a decent reason for not calling again—that I understand I am compromising her good name, or something of the sort. I have accepted too much hospitality at her hands to drop her brusquely, without a word of explanation."

"You can write her a letter. You can merely send polite excuses when she invites you. You are very busy. You have every excuse. Gradually, she will think no more about you—if it be true that she is nothing to you. You have your choice, sir! Either your promise, or I return by the next packet to Albany."

But Hamilton, always considerate of women, and despising the weakness and brutality which permits a man to slink out of an amour, would not retreat, and Betsey finally settled herself in her chair, and said, with unmistakable determination:—

"Very well, go now. I shall not move from this room—this chair—until you return."

Hamilton caught his hat and left the house. Although he was possessed by the one absorbing desire to win back his wife, who had never been so dear as to-day, when for the first time she had placed him at arm's length and given him a thorough fright, still his brain, accustomed to see all sides of every question at once, and far into the future, spoke plainly of the hour when he would regret the loss of Mrs. Croix. He might forget her for weeks at a time, but he always reawakened to a sense of her being with a glowing impression that the world was more alive and fair. The secret romance had been very dear and pleasant. The end was come, however, and he was eager to pass it.

His eye was attracted to a chemist's window, and entering the shop hastily, he purchased a bottle of smelling salts. The act reminded him of Mrs. Mitchell, and that he had not heard from her for several months. He resolved to write that night, and permitted his mind to wander to the green Island which was almost lost among his memories. The respite was brief, however.

To his relief he found Mrs. Croix in her intellectual habit. The lady, who was reading in the door of her boudoir above the garden steps, exclaimed, without formal greeting:—

"I am transported, sir. Such descriptions never were written before. Listen!"

Hamilton, who hated descriptions of scenery at any time, and was in his most direct and imperative temper, stood the infliction but a moment, then asked her attention. She closed the book over her finger and smiled charmingly.

"Forgive me for boring you," she said graciously. "But you know my passion for letters; and if truth must be told, I am a little piqued. I have not laid eyes on you for a fortnight. Not but that I am used to your lapses of memory by this time," she added, with a sigh.

Hamilton went straight to the point. He told her the exact reason for the necessary breach, omitting nothing but the episode of Mrs. Reynolds; one cause of reproach was as much as a man could be expected to furnish an angry woman.

For Mrs. Croix was very angry. At first she had pressed her hand against her heart as if about to faint, and Hamilton had hastily extracted the salts; but the next moment she was on her feet, towering and expanding like an avenging queen about to order in her slaves with scimitars and chargers.

"Do you mean," she cried, "that I am flouted, flung aside like an old cravat? I? With half the men in America in love with me? Good God, sir! I have known from the beginning that you would tire, but I thought to be on the watch and save my pride. How dare you come like this? Why could you not give me warning? It is an outrage. I would rather you had killed me."

"I am sorry I have blundered," said Hamilton, humbly. "But how in Heaven's name can a man know how a woman will take anything? I had such respect for your great intelligence that I thought it due you to treat you as I would a man—"

"A man?" exclaimed Mrs. Croix. "Treat me like a man! Of all the supremely silly things I ever heard one of your sex say, that is the silliest. I am not a man, and you know it."

Hamilton hastened to assure her that she was deliberately averting her intelligence from his true meaning. "You have never doubted my sincerity for a moment," he added. "You surely know what it will cost me never to see you again. There is but one cause under heaven that could have brought me to you with this decision. You may believe in my regret—to use a plain word—when you reflect upon all that you have been to me."

He was desperately afraid that her anger would dissolve in tears, and he be placed in a position from which he was not sure of emerging with a clear conscience,—and he dared take home nothing less. But Mrs. Croix, however she might feel on the morrow, was too outraged in her pride and vanity to be susceptible either to grief or the passion of love. She stormed up and down the room in increasing fury, her eyes flashing blue lightning, her strong hands smashing whatever costly offering they encountered. "Wives! Wives! Wives!" she screamed. "The little fools! What are wives for but to keep house and bring up babies? They are a class apart. I have suffered enough from their impertinent interference. Am I not a woman apart? Will you assert that there is a 'wife' in America who can hold her own with me for a moment in anything? Was I not created to reveal to men—and only the ablest, for I waste no time on fools—the very sublimation of my sex—a companionship they will find in no silly little fool, stupid with domesticity? Am I to submit, then, to be baulked by a sex I despise—and in the greatest passion that ever possessed a woman?" She stopped and laughed, bringing her lashes together and moving forward her beautiful lips. "What a fool I am!" she said. "You will come back when the humour seizes you. I had forgot that your family returned to-day. You are in your most domestic mood—and I have been inflicted with that before. But there will come an hour when neither your wife nor any other mortal power will keep you away from me. Is it not true?"

Hamilton had turned pale; his ready imagination had responded with a presentiment of many desperate struggles. He rose, and took her hand forcibly.

"No," he said. "I shall not return. Believe me, that is the hardest sentence I have ever pronounced upon myself. And forgive me if I have been rude and inconsiderate. It was the result of the desire to have the agony over as quickly as possible. I should have found the anticipation unbearable, and I do not believe it would have been more soothing to you. There is no reason why your pride should be wounded, for this is not the result of satiety on my part, but of an imperative necessity. Shake hands with me."

She wrenched her hand free and, seizing a vase, flung it into a mirror. Hamilton retreated.

XXXVI

He had been gone just thirty-five minutes, Betsey received him with stern approval and announced that she had implicit faith in his promise to avoid Mrs. Croix in the future. But it was quite evident that his punishment was unfinished, and with due humility and some humour he bided her pleasure. Between the two women he had a lively month. Mrs. Croix wrote him a letter a day. At first it was evident that she had taken herself in hand, that her pen was guided by her marvellous intelligence. She apologized charmingly for her exhibition of temper, and for any reflection she might have made upon the most estimable of women, who (with a sigh) had the happiness to be the wife of Alexander Hamilton. She ignored his ultimatum and asked him to come at once, and talk the matter over calmly. Hamilton replied with the graceful playfulness of which he was master, but left no doubt of his continuity of purpose. After the interchange of several letters of this complexion, in which Mrs. Croix was quite conscious of revealing the ample resources of her wit, spirit, and tact, she broke down and went through every circumstance of a despairing woman fighting to recover the supreme happiness of her life. At times she was humble, she prostrated herself at his feet. Again she raved with all the violence of her nature. Her pride, and it was very great, was submerged under the terrible agony of her heart. Even passion was forgotten, and she was sincere for the moment when she vowed that she had no wish beyond his mere presence.

Hamilton was horribly distressed. He would rather she had turned upon him at once with all her tigerish capacity for hate. But he had given his word to his wife, and that was the end of it. He answered every letter, but his gallantry and kindness were pitch and oil, and it was with profound relief that he watched the gradual stiffening of her pride, the dull resentment, even although he knew it meant that an enemy, subtle, resourceful, and venomous, was in the process of making. In her final letter she gave him warning—and a last opportunity. But of this he took no notice.

Meanwhile, Betsey had led him a dance. Naturally bright, but heretofore too sheltered and happy, too undisturbed in her trust, she had done little thinking, little analysis, felt nothing but amusement for the half-comprehended vagaries of men. But jealousy and suffering give a woman, in a week, a fill of knowledge and cunning that will serve her a lifetime. Betsey developed both coquetry and subtlety. She knew that if she obtained command of the situation now, she should hold it to the end, and she was determined that this crisis should result in a close and permanent union. If she finally believed his denial, she was much too shrewd to give him the satisfaction of regaining his former mastery of her mind; but she ceased to speak of it. Meanwhile, he was devoting his energies to winning her again, and he had never found life so interesting. She radiated a new bewitchment, and he had always thought her the most adorable woman on the planet. He divined a good many of her mental processes; but if he was a trifle amused, he was deeply respectful. She was sufficiently uncertain in this new character to torment him unbearably, and when she occasionally betrayed that she was interested and fascinated, he was transported. When she finally succumbed, he was more in love than he had ever been in his life.

XXXVII

The next seven years of Hamilton's life must be reviewed very rapidly. Interesting as they might be made, space diminishes, and after all they were but the precursor of the last great battle of the giants.

In the spring of 1794 the Virginian ring rallied for their final assault in Congress. Their spokesman this time was a worthless man, named Fraunces, and he brought forth a charge against the Secretary of the Treasury of unfaithfulness in office. Hamilton promptly demanded another investigation. The result may be found in the following letters from eminent Federals in Virginia. The first is from Colonel Carrington, dated Richmond, July 9th.

I do not write this letter as congratulatory upon the final issue of the Inquiry into the Treasury Department, as I never conceived you exposed to receive injury therefrom. I write to express my most sincere wishes that you will not suffer the illiberality with which you have been treated to deprive the public of your services, at least until the storm which hangs over us, and is to be dreaded, not less from our own follies and vices than the malignance and intrigues of foreigners, blows over. It is true you have been abused, but it has been and still is, the fate of him who was supposed out of the reach of all slander. It is indeed the lot, in some degree, of every man amongst us who has the sense or fortitude to speak and act rationally, and such men must continue so to speak and act if we are saved from anarchy.

On July 20th, Thomas Corbin wrote to Hamilton deploring the political conditions in Virginia created by Thomas Jefferson, in which these significant passages occur:—

Calumny and misrepresentation are the only weapons made use of by the faction of Virginia. By a dexterous management of these they have brought into popular disrepute, and even into popular odium, some of the wisest and best characters in the United States.

War is waged by this faction against every candidate who possesses the union of requisites. Independent fortune, independent principles, talents, and integrity are denounced as badges of aristocracy; but if you add to these good manners and a decent appearance, his political death is decreed without the benefit of a hearing. In short, with a few exceptions everything that appertains to the character of a gentleman is ostracized. That yourself and Mr. Jay should be no favorites in Virginia, is not to be wondered at. But all those whose good opinion is worth your acceptance entertain for you both the same veneration and esteem, and hear the aspersions of your enemies with the same indignation that I do; who, after the closest examination, and the purest conviction can conscientiously subscribe myself etc.

In the autumn the whiskey disturbances in western Pennsylvania assumed such serious proportions that Hamilton insisted upon recourse to arms. With his usual precision he had calculated the numbers of the insurgents, and the amount of troops necessary to overwhelm them. Washington issued requisitions for fifteen thousand men, and set out with the troops, his first intention being to command in person. Hamilton accompanied him, and upon the President's return to Philadelphia, assumed the general superintendence of the army, whose commander, Henry Lee, was one of his devoted adherents. Many motives have been ascribed to Hamilton for this exceptional proceeding, and Washington was bitterly assailed for "not being able to move without his favourite Secretary at his elbow," and for giving additional conspicuousness to a man whose power already was a "menace to Republican liberties." Randolph, then the nominal Secretary of State, but quite aware that while Hamilton remained in the Cabinet he was but a figurehead, was so wroth, that later, in his futile "Vindication," following what practically was his expulsion from the Cabinet, he animadverted bitterly upon a favour which no one but Hamilton would have presumed to ask. Fauchet, the successor of Genet, in the intercepted letter to his government, which brought about the fall of Randolph, convicting him of corruption and treachery, has this to say:—

The army marched; the President made known that he was going to command it; Hamilton, as I have understood, requested to follow him; the President dared not refuse him. It does not require much, penetration to divine the object of this journey. In the President it was wise, it might also be his duty. But in Mr. Hamilton it was a consequence of the profound policy which directs all his steps; a measure dictated by a perfect knowledge of the human heart. Was it not interesting for him, for his party, tottering under the weight of events without and accusations within, to proclaim an intimacy more perfect than ever with the President, whose very name is a sufficient shield against the most formidable attacks? Now, what more evident mark could the President give of his intimacy than by suffering Mr. Hamilton, whose name, even, is understood in the west as that of a public enemy, to go and place himself at the head of the army which went, if I may use the expression, to cause his system to triumph against the opposition of the people? The presence of Mr. Hamilton with the army must attach it more than ever to his party.