Read The American Chronicle 1 - Burr for Free Online Page B

him a present. What about new quarters for his firm? Je redoute Reade Street. I am foolishly generous when not exploited. You must take my side in this, Charlot.”
    I promised to help her. As I was swearing fealty, one of the beautiful scarlet birds splattered Madame’s shoulder with pale guano. Unaware of the benediction, she allowed me to escort her back to the golden carriage.
    En route Sam Swartwout greeted us. He is the collector of the port of New York, appointed by President Jackson to the surprise of many since he is a devoted Burrite.
    Madame greeted Swartwout with delight. The collector, too, was all smiles and compliments; and earthy bluntness. “So you finally landed the old boy.”
    “What a way to talk, Sam! He landed me. And why not? Ain’t I a rich widow?” For a moment I had a glimpse of the fun that Eliza Bowen must have been for a whole generation. Gone were the French pretensions, the mannered hardness: she giggled like a girl just out of convent, meeting her first beau. As best he could, Swartwout played the part of roaring boy, despite whisky voice, round glazed eyes, thin hair combed forward like an ancient Roman. “When will you have me to the mansion?”
    “Name the day, dear Sam. What a good friend!” She used me for this declaration, like a sounding brass. “And loyal to the Colonel through thick and thin.”
    “Certainly through thin, Liza. But now that it’s thick, I’m not sure which way to jump.” They roared with laughter at things unknown to me—to anyone not of their bawdy amoral generation. Swartwout often comes to the office to chat with the Colonel behind closed doors. They have so many secrets, these ancient adventurers.
    Swartwout turned to me. “My respects to the Colonel. Tell him I’ll see him soon. Tell him I don’t like Clay as much as he may have heard. He’ll know what that means. So when are you going to qualify yourself for the law?”
    I gave my usual answer. “Soon, I think.”
    “You have the best teacher in the world, Charlie. Fact, if the Colonel had only had the luck to have been his own teacher, he would’ve been emperor of Mexico by now and the world a whole lot better place—at least for you and me, Liza.” With a flourish, the aged satyr kissed Madame’s hand and made his way to the apple-seller on the quay.
    “He is loyal, loyal, loyal!” Madame was in a better mood; her husband temporarily forgiven. “But then except for l’Empereur no man of our time has commanded and kept the loyalty of so many as Colonel Burr.”
    As we got into the carriage, I knew what it felt like to be the president: everyone gaped at us.
    “I wonder,” said Madame, happily aware of the effect her carriage was having on the people, “if I should paint the vice-president’s seal on the doors. And is there a seal for the vice-president?”
    I said I thought it unlikely a former vice-president would be allowed to employ the emblem of his lost rank. But Madame paid no attention to me; talked instead of the carriage the Emperor had given her at La Rochelle. Apparently the imperial coat-of-arms on the door made France’s police her footmen, France’s army her body-guard.
    “He was gallant, no doubt of that.” I thought she meant Bonaparte but it was Burr she had in mind.
    “Certainly he worships you, Madame.” I saw no harm in making peace. The bird’s dropping had dried on her silken shoulder.
    Madame—no, Eliza Bowen—chuckled. “He don’t worship nobody, Charlie. He don’t love nobody either. Never did. Except Theodosia ...”
    “His first wife?”
    “No, not that old woman, hollowed out by the cancer. The girl Theodosia. She’s the one he loved—his daughter, and no one else!”
    Madame suddenly looked grim, awed, puzzled. “Strange business, Aaron Burr and his daughter, and no business of ours. After all, what’s dead is finished. Poor Aaron, I think sometimes he drowned along with her, and all we’ve got of him now—all that’s left—is his