Read The American Chronicle 1 - Burr for Free Online

livery, leapt to the ground, opened the door to the carriage, shoved me inside like a sack of apples; sprang onto the box, and before I could protest, we were hurtling toward the Bowling Green.
    Madame took my hand in hers, breathed breakfast Maderia in my face. “Charlot, he has robbed me!”
    I looked at her blankly; not breathing until she removed her face from mine, and sank back onto the velvet cushions.
    “I have married a thief!” Madame clutched her reticule to her bosom as though I had designs on one or the other, and in a torrent of Frenchified English told me how she had owned stock in a toll-bridge near Hartford. During the first raptures of their honeymoon in the house of Governor Edwards, the Colonel persuaded her to sell the stock. So trusting, so loving, so secure in her new place as the bride of a former vice-president, Madame allowed the Colonel to sell the shares and himself collect the cash—some six thousand dollars which he insisted on having sewn into the lining of his jacket; for safe-keeping, he said.
    “ ‘ Ma foi !’ I said to him. ‘It will be better to sew the money into my petticoat. After all, those shares belonged to me, non ?’We were in our bedroom in the house du Gouverneur and I wanted to make no scene. Naturellement .So what did he say to that? Why, damn him for a bastard in hell, he said, ‘I am your master, Madame. Your husband, and under law what you have is mine!’ Under law !”The small bloodshot eyes started in the huge sockets: one can imagine her fleshless skull too easily. “Well, I know the law forward and back and if he wants to play at litigation with me there are a hundred lawyers in this city I can put to work, and beat him in every court!” She ordered the coachman to stop the carriage, just opposite Castle Garden.
    “Then last night, after supper, he said he was unwell. Wanted to go early to bed. Not until this morning did I realize that he had slipped away in the night, having hired a farmer’s wagon. So I hurried to town—too late! He has now disposed of my money, and broken my heart!”
    The footman opened the carriage door, and helped Madame alight. “We shall take the air.” Firmly she took first my arm, then the air in noisy gusts.
    I like the Battery best in high summer: trees too green, roses overblown, sail-boats tacking on the gray river while the pale muslin dresses of promenading girls furl and unfurl like flags in the flower and sea-scented wind.
    We walked toward the round rosy brick cake of Castle Garden—the old fort where a few weeks ago I saw the President himself arrive by ship. Slender, fragile, with a mane of tangled white hair, General Jackson crossed the causeway to the shore; he moved slowly, grasping here an arm, there a shoulder, anything for support. He will not live out his term, they say.
    Colonel Burr stood with me at the bottom of Broadway; the roaring, drunken crowd below us like a dozen Fourth of July celebrations rolled into one. “Not even Washington got such a reception.”
    “What would the President do if he knew you were here?” I asked.
    “He’d probably make the sign against the evil eye.” Burr laughed. “After all, I am his guilty past. He wanted to help me conquer Mexico. Now look at him!” Burr spoke fondly, without bitterness, like a man whose child has grown and gone. Then, as the President vanished into the crowd, we were both delighted when the causeway suddenly collapsed, dunking a number of dignitaries in the river.
    Madame bade me buy us ice-cream, sold by an Irish girl. Irish girl. Must not write that phrase. Or think such things. But I did. Do. So much for high resolve. I knew that I would see Mrs. Townsend to-night. How weak I am!
    “I owe the Colonel a good deal.” Madame marched between the elms. Strollers leapt aside as she passed: a man—no, woman-of-war on the high green flowery Battery Sea. “In the past, he was good to me for I was not always—how you say in English, bienvenue