Kitabı oku: «An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XII – IDLENESS AND BLACK RESOLVES
AARON finds a Senate existence inexpressibly dull. He writes his Theodosia: “There is nothing to do here. Everybody is idle; and, so far as I see, the one occupation of a senator is to lie sunning himself in his own effulgence. My colleague, Rufus King, and others I might name, succeed in that way in passing their days very pleasantly. For myself, not having their sublime imagination, and being perhaps better acquainted with my own measure, I find this sitting in the sunshine of self a failure.”
Mindful of his issue, Aaron offers a resolution throwing open the Senate doors. The Senate, whose notion of greatness is a notion of exclusion, votes it down. Aaron warns his puffball brothers of the toga:
“Be assured,” says he, “you fool no one by such trumpery tricks as this key-turning. You succeed only in bringing republican institutions into contempt, and getting yourselves laughed at where you are not condemned.”
Aaron reintroduces his open-door resolution; in the end he passes it. Galleries are thrown up in the chamber, and all who will may watch the Senate as it proceeds upon the transaction of its dignified destinies. At this but few come; whereupon the Senate feels abashed. It is not, it discovers, the thrilling spectacle its puffball fancy painted.
Carked of the weariness of doing nothing, Aaron bursts forth with an idea. He will write a history of the War of the Revolution. He begins digging among the papers of the State department, tossing the archives of his country hither and yon, on the tireless horns of his industry.
Hamilton creeps with the alarming tale to Washington. “He speaks of writing a history, sir,” says sycophant Hamilton. “That is mere subterfuge; he intends a libel against yourself.”
Washington brings his thin lips together in a tight, straight line, while his heavy forehead gathers to a half frown.
“How, sir,” he asks, after a pause, “could he libel me? I am conscious of nothing in my past which would warrant such a thought.”
“There is not, sir, a fact of your career that would not, if mentioned, make for your glory.” Hamilton deprecates with delicately outspread hands as he says this. “That, however, would not deter this Burr, who is Satanic in his mendacities. Believe me, sir, he has the power of making fiction look more like truth than truth itself. And there is another thought: Suppose he were to assail you with some trumped-up story. You could not come down from your high place to contradict him; it would detract from you, stain your dignity. That is the penalty, sir” – this with a sigh of unspeakable adulation – “which men of your utter eminence have to pay. Such as you are at the mercy of every gutter-bred vilifier; whatever his charges, you cannot open your mouth.”
Aaron hears nothing of this. His first guess of it comes when he is told by a State department underling that he will no longer be allowed to inspect and make copies of the papers.
Without wasting words on the underling, Aaron walks in upon Jefferson. That secretary receives him courteously, but not warmly.
“How, sir,” begins Aaron, a wicked light in his eye – “how, sir, am I to understand this? Is it by your order that the files of the department are withheld from me?”
“It is not, sir,” returns Jefferson, coldly frank. “My own theories of a citizen and his rights would open every public paper to the inspection of the meanest. I do not understand government by secrecy.”
“By whose order then am I refused?”
“By order of the President.”
Aaron ruminates the situation. At last he speaks out: “I must yield,” he says, “while realizing the injustice done me. Still I shall not soon forget the incident. You say it is the order of Washington; you are mistaken, sir. It is not the lion but his jackal that has put this affront upon me.”
Idle in the Senate, precluded from collecting the materials for that projected history, Aaron discovers little to employ himself about in Philadelphia. Not that he falls into stagnation; for his business of the law, and his speculations in land take him often to New York. His trusted Theodosia is his manager of business, and when he cannot go to New York she meets him half way in Trenton.
Aside from his concerns of law and land, Aaron devotes a deal of thought to little Theodosia – child of his soul’s heart! In his pride, he hurries her into Horace and Terence at the age of ten; and later sends her voyaging to Troy with Homer, and all over the world with Herodotus. Nor is this the whole tale of baby Theodosia’s evil fortunes. She is taught French, music, drawing, dancing, and whatever else may convey a glory and a gloss. Love-led, pride-blinded, Aaron takes up the rôle of father in its most awful form.
“Believe me, my dear,” he says to Theodosia mere, who pleads for an educational leniency – “believe me, I shall prove in our darling that women have souls, a psychic fact which high ones have been heard to dispute.”
At the age of twelve, the book-burdened little Theodosia translates the Constitution into French at Aaron’s request; at sixteen, she finds celebration as the most learned of her sex since Voltaire’s Emilie. Theodosia mere, however, is spared the spectacle of her baby’s harrowing erudition, for in the middle of Aaron’s term as senator death carries her away.
With that loss, Aaron is more and more drawn to baby Theodosia; she becomes his earth, his heaven, and stands for all his tenderest hopes. While she is yet a child, he makes her the head of Richmond Hill, and gives a dinner of state, over which she presides, to the limping Talleyrand, and Volney with his “Ruins of Empire.” For all her precocities, and that hothouse bookishness which should have spoiled her, baby Theodosia blossoms roundly into womanhood – beautiful as brilliant.
While Aaron finds little or nothing of public sort to engage him, he does not permit this idleness to shake his hold of politics. Angry with the royalties of Washington, he drifts into near if not intimate relations with the arch-democrat Jefferson. Aaron and the loose-framed secretary are often together; and yet never on terms of confidence or even liking. They are in each other’s society because they go politically the same road. Fellow wayfarers of politics, with “Democracy” their common destination, they are fairly compelled into one another’s company. But there grows up no spirit of comradeship, no mutual sentiment of admiration and trust.
Aaron’s feelings toward Jefferson, and the sources of them, find setting forth in a conversation which he holds with his new disciple, Senator Andrew Jackson, who has come on from his wilderness home by the Cumberland.
“It is not that I like Jefferson,” he explains, “but that I dislike Washington and Hamilton. Jefferson will make a splendid tool to destroy the others with; I mean to use him as the instrument of my vengeance.”
Jefferson, when speaking of Aaron to the wooden Adams, is neither so full nor so frank. The Bay State publicist has again made mention of that impressive ancestry which he thinks is Aaron’s best claim to public as well as private consideration.
“You may see evidence of his pure blood,” concludes the wooden one, “in his perfect, nay, matchless politeness.”
| “He is matchlessly polite, as you say,” assents Jefferson; “and yet I cannot fight down the fear that his politeness has lies in it.”
The days drift by, and Minister Gouverneur Morris is recalled from Paris. Washington makes it known to the Senate that he will adopt any name it suggests for the vacancy. The Senate decides upon Aaron; a committee goes with that honorable suggestion to the President.
Washington hears the committee with cloudy surprise. He is silent for a moment; then he says:
“Gentlemen, your proposal of Senator Burr has taken me unawares. I must crave space for consideration; oblige me by returning in an hour.”
The senators who constitute the committee retire, and Washington seeks his jackal Hamilton.
“Appoint Colonel Burr to France!” exclaims Hamilton. “Sir, it would shock the best sentiment of the country! The man is an atheist, as immoral as irreligious. If you will permit me to say so, sir, I should give the Senate a point-blank refusal.”
“But my promise!” says Washington.
“Sir, I should break a dozen such promises, before I consented to sacrifice the public name, by sending Colonel Burr to France. However, that is not required. You told the Senate that you would adopt its suggestion; you have now only to ask it to make a second suggestion.”
“The thought is of value,” responds Washington, clearing. “I am free to say, I should not relish turning my back on my word.”
The committee returns, and is requested to give the Senate the “President’s compliments,” and say that he will be pleased should that honorable body submit another name. Washington is studious to avoid any least of comment on the nomination of Aaron.
The committee is presently in Washington’s presence for the third time, with the news that the Senate has no name other than Aaron’s for the French mission.
“Then, gentlemen,” exclaims Washington, his hot temper getting the reins, “please report to the Senate that I refuse. I shall send no one to France in whom I have not confidence; and I do not trust Senator Burr.”
“What blockheads!” comments Aaron, when he hears. “They will one day wish they had gotten rid of me, though at the price of forty missions.”
The wooden Adams is elected President to succeed Washington. Aaron’s colleague, Rufus King, offers a resolution of compliment and thanks to the retiring one, extolling his presidential honesty and patriotic breadth. A cold hush falls upon the Senate, when Aaron takes the floor on the resolution.
Aaron’s remarks are curt, and to the barbed point. He cannot, he says, bring himself to regard Washington’s rule as either patriotic or broad. That President throughout has been subservient to England, who was our tyrant, is our foe. Equally he has been inimical to France, who was our ally, is our friend. More; he has subverted the republic and made of it a monarchy with himself as king, wanting only in those unimportant embellishments of scepter, throne, and crown. He, Aaron, seeking to protest against these almost treasons, shall vote against the resolution.
The Senate sits aghast. Aaron’s respectable colleague, Rufus King, cannot believe his Tory ears. At last he totters to his shocked feet.
“I am amazed at the action of my colleague!” he exclaims. “I – ”
Before he can go further, Aaron is up with an interruption. “It is my duty,” says Aaron, “to warn the senior senator from New York that he must not permit his amazement at my action to get beyond his control. I do not like to consider the probable consequences, should that amazement become a tax upon my patience; and even he, I think, will concede the impropriety, to give it no sterner word, of allowing it any manifestation personally offensive to myself.”
As Aaron delivers this warning, so dangerous is the impression he throws off, that it first whitens and then locks the condemnatory lips of colleague King. That statesman, rocking uneasily on his feet, waits a moment after Aaron is done, and then takes his seat, swallowing at a gulp whatever remains unsaid of his intended eloquence. The roll is called; Aaron votes against that resolution of confidence and thanks, carrying a baker’s dozen of the Senate with him, among them the lean, horse-faced Andrew Jackson from the Cumberland.
Washington bows his adieus to the people, and retires to Mount Vernon. Adams the wooden becomes President, while Jefferson the angular wields the Senate gavel as Vice-President. Hamilton is more potent than ever; for Washington at Mount Vernon continues the strongest force in government, and Hamilton controls that force. Adams is President in nothing save name; Hamilton – fawning upon Washington, bullying Adams and playing upon that wooden one’s fear of not succeeding himself – is the actual chief magistrate.
As Aaron’s term nears its end, he decides that he will not accept reelection. His hatred of Hamilton has set iron-hand, and he is resolved for that scheming one’s destruction. His plans are fashioned; their execution, however, is only possible in New York. Therefore, he will quit the Senate, quit the capital.
“My plans mean the going of Adams, as well as the going of Hamilton,” he says to Senator Jackson from the Cumberland, when laying bare his purposes. “I do not leave public life for good. I shall return; and on that day Jefferson will supplant Adams, and I shall take the place of Jefferson.”
“And Hamilton?” asks the Cumberland one.
“Hamilton the defeated shall be driven into the wilderness of retirement. Once there, the serpents of his own jealousies and envies may be trusted to sting him to death.”
CHAPTER XIII – THE GRINDING OF AARON’S MILL
AARON tells his friends that he will not go back to the Senate. He puts this resolution to retire on the double grounds of young Theodosia’s loneliness and a consequent paternal necessity of his presence at Richmond Hill, and the tangled condition of his business; which last after the death of Theodosia mère falls into a snarl. Never, by the lifting of an eyelash or the twitching of a lip, does he betray any corner of his political designs, or of his determination to destroy Hamilton. His heart is a furnace of white-hot throbbing hate against that gentleman of diagonal morals and biased veracities; but no sign of the fires within is visible on the arctic exterior.
Polite, on ceaseless guard, Aaron even becomes affable when Hamilton is mentioned. He goes so far with his strategy, indeed, as to imitate concern in connection with the political destinies of the rusty Schuyler, now exceedingly on the shelf. Aaron has the rusty Schuyler down from his shelved retirement, brushes the political dust from his cloak, and declares that, in a spirit of generosity proper in a young community toward an old, tried, even if rusty servant, the State ought to send the rusty one to fill the Senate seat which he, Aaron, is giving up. To such a degree does he work upon the generous sensibilities of mankind, that the rusty Schuyler is at once unanimously chosen to reassume those honors which he, Aaron, stripped from him six years before.
Hamilton falls into a fog; he cannot understand the Aaronian liberality. Aaron’s astonishing proposal, to return the rusty one to the Senate, smells dangerously like a Greek and a gift. In the end, however, Hamilton’s enormous vanity gets the floor, and he decides that Aaron – courage broken – is but cringing to win the Hamilton friendship.
“That is it,” he explains to President Adams. “The fellow has lost heart. This is his way of surrendering, and begging for peace.”
There are others as hopelessly lost in mists of amazement over Aaron’s benevolence as is Hamilton; one is Aaron’s closest friend Van Ness.
“Schuyler for the Senate!” he exclaims. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” whispers Aaron, with Machiavellian slyness, “that I want to get rid of the old dotard here. I am only clearing the ground, sir!”
“And for what?”
“The destruction of Hamilton.”
As Aaron speaks the hated name it is like the opening of a furnace door. One is given a flash of the flaming tumult within. Then the door closes; all is again dark, passionless, inscrutable.
Aaron runs his experienced eye along the local array. The Hamilton forces are in the ascendant. Jay is governor; having beaten North-of-Ireland Clinton, who was unable to explain how he came to sell more than three millions of the public’s acres to McComb for eightpence.
And yet, for all that supremacy of the Hamilton influence – working out its fortunes with the cogent name of Washington – Aaron’s practiced vision detects here and there the seams of weakness. Old Clinton is as angry as any sore-head bear over that gubernatorial beating, which he lays to Hamilton. The clan-Livingston is sulking among its hills because its chief, the mighty chancellor, was kept out of the President’s cabinet by the secret word of Hamilton – whose policies are ever jealous and double-jointed. Aaron, wise in such coils, sees all about him the raw materials wherefrom may be constructed a resistless opposition to the Party-of-things-as-they-are – which is the party of Hamilton.
One thing irks the pride of Aaron – a pride ever impatient and ready for mutiny. In dealing with the Livingstons and the Clintons, these gentry – readily eager indeed to take their revenges with the help of Aaron – never omit a patrician attitude of overbearing importance. They make a merit of accepting Aaron’s aid, and proceed on the assumption that he gains honor by serving them. Aaron makes up his mind to remedy this.
“I must have a following,” says he. “I will call about me every free lance in the political hills. There shall be a new clan born, of which I must be the Rob Roy. Like another McGregor, I with my followers shall take up position between the Campbell and the Montrose – the Clintons and the Livingstons. By threatening one with the other, I can then control both. Given a force of my own, the high-stomached Livingstons and the obstinate Clintons must obey me. They shall yet move forward or fall back, march and countermarch by my word.”
When Aaron sets up as a Rob Roy of politics, he is not compelled to endless labors in constructing a following. The thing he looks for lies ready to his hand. In the long-room of Brom Martling’s tavern, at Spruce and Nassau, meets the “Sons of Tammany or the Columbian Order.” The name is overlong, and hard to pronounce unless sober; wherefore the “Sons of Tammany or the Columbian Order,” as they sit swigging Brom Martling’s cider, call themselves the “Bucktails.”
The aristocracy of the Revolution – being the officers – created unto themselves the Cincinnati. Whereupon, the yeomanry of the Revolution – being the privates – as a counterpoise to the perfumed, not to say gilded Cincinnati, brought the Sons of Tammany or the Columbian Order, otherwise the Bucktails, into being.
The Bucktails, good cider-loving souls, are solely a charitable-social organization, and have no dreams of politics. Aaron becomes one of them – quaffing and exalting the Martling cider. He takes them up into the mountaintop of the possible, and shows them the kingdoms of the political world and the glories thereof. Also, he points out that Hamilton, the head of the hated Cincinnati, is turning that organization of perfume and purple into a power. The Bucktails hear, see, believe, and resolve under the chiefship of Aaron to fight their loathed rivals, the Cincinnati, in every ensuing battle of the ballots to the end of time.
The word that Aaron has brought the Buck-tails to political heel is not long in making the rounds. It is worth registering that so soon as the Clintons and the Livingstons learn the political determinations of this formidable body of cider drinkers – with Aaron at its head – they conduct themselves toward our young exsenator with profoundest respect. They eliminate the overbearing element in their attitudes, and, when they would confer with him, they go to him not he to them. Where before they declared their intentions, they now ask his consent. It falls out as Aaron forethreatened. Our Rob Roy at the head of his bold Bucktails is sought for and deferred to by both the Clintons and the Livingstons – the Campbell and the Montrose.
Some philosopher has said that there are three requisites to successful war: the first gold, the second gold, the third gold. That deep one might have said the same of politics. Now, when he dominates his Tammany Bucktails – who obey him with shut eyes – and has brought the perverse Clintons and the stiff-necked Livingstons beneath his thumb, Aaron considers the question of the sinews of war. Politics, as a science, has already so far progressed that principle is no longer sufficient to insure success. If he would have a best ballot-box expression, he must pave the way with money. The reasons thereof cry out at him from all quarters. There is such a commodity as a campaign. No one is patriotic enough to blow a campaign fife or beat a campaign drum for fun. Torches are not a gift, but a purchase; neither does Mart-ling’s cider flow without a price. Aaron, considering this ticklish puzzle of money, sees that his plans as well as his party require a bank.
There are two banks in the city, only two; these are held in the hollow of the Hamilton hand. Under the Hamilton pressure these banks act coercively. They make loans or refuse them, as the applicant is or is not amenable to the Hamilton touch. Obedience to Hamilton, added to security even somewhat mildewed, will obtain a loan; while rebellion against Hamilton, plus the best security beneath the commercial sun, cannot coax a dollar from their strong boxes.
Aaron resolves to bring about a break in these iron-bound conditions. The best forces of the town are thereby held in chains to Hamilton. Aaron must free these forces before they can leave Hamilton and follow him. How is this freedom to be worked out? Construct another bank? It presents as many difficulties as making a new north star. Hamilton watches the bank situation with the hundred eyes of Argus; every effort to obtain a charter is knocked on the head.
Those armed experiences, which overtook Aaron as he went from Quebec to Monmouth, and from Monmouth to the Westchester lines, left him full of war knowledge. He is deep in the art of surprise, ambuscade, flank movement, night attack; and now he brings this knowledge to bear. To capture a bank charter is to capture the Hamilton Gibraltar, and, while all but impossible of accomplishment, it will prove conclusive if accomplished. Aaron wrinkles his brows and racks his wits for a way.
Gradually, like the power-imp emerging from Aladdin’s bottle, a scheme begins to take shape before his mental eye. Yellow fever has been reaping a shrouded harvest in the town. The local wiseacres – as usual – lay it to the water. Everybody reveres science; and, while everybody knows full well that science is nothing better than just the accepted ignorance of to-day, still everybody is none the less on his knees to it, and to the wiseacres, who are its high priests. Science and the wiseacres lay yellow fever to the water; the kneeling town, taking the word from them, does the same. The local water is found guilty; the popular cry goes up for a purer element. The town demands water that is innocent of homicidal qualities.
It is at this crisis that Aaron gravely steps forward. He talks of Yellow Jack and unfurls a proposal. He will form a water company; it shall be called “The Manhattan Company.”
With “No more yellow fever!” for a war-cry, Aaron lays siege to Albany. What he wants is incorporation, what he seeks is a charter. With the fear of yellow fever curling about their heart roots, the Albany authorities – being the Hamilton Governor Jay and a Hamilton Legislature – comply with his demands. The Manhattan Company is incorporated, capital two millions.
Aaron goes home with the charter. Carrying out the charter – which authorizes a water company – he originates a modest well near the City Hall. It is not a big well, and might with its limpid output no more than serve the thirst of what folk belong with any city block.
Well complete and in operation, the Manhattan Company abruptly opens a bank, vastly bigger than the well. Also, the bank possesses a feature in this; it is anti-Hamilton.
Instantly, every man or institution that nurses a dislike for Hamilton takes his or its money to the Manhattan Bank. It is no more than a matter of days when the new bank, in the volume of its business and the extent of its deposits, overtops those banks which fly the Hamilton flag. And Aaron, the indefatigable, is in control. At the new Manhattan Bank, he turns on or shuts off the flow of credit, as Brom Mart-ling – spigot-busy in the thirsty destinies of the Bucktails – turns on or shuts off the flow of his own cider.
After the first throe of Hamiltonian horror, Governor Jay sends his attorney general. This dignitary demands of Aaron by what authority his Manhattan Company thus hurls itself upon the flanks of a surprised world, in the wolfish guise of a bank? The company was to furnish the world with water; it is now furnishing it with money, leaving it to fill its empty water buckets at the old-time spouts. Also, it has turned its incorporated back on yellow fever, as upon a question in which interest is dead.
The Jay attorney general puts these queries to Aaron, who replies with the charter. He points with his slim forefinger; and the Jay attorney general – first polishing his amazed spectacles – reads the following clause:
“The surplus capital may be employed in any way not inconsistent with the laws and Constitution of the United States or of the State of New York.”
The Jay attorney general gulps a little; his learned Adam’s apple goes up and down. When the aforesaid clause is lodged safe inside his mental stomach, Aaron assists digestion with an explanation. It is short, but lucidly sufficient.
“The Manhattan Company, having completed its well and acting within the authority granted by the clause just read, has opened with its surplus capital the Manhattan Bank.”
The Jay attorney general stares blinkingly, like an owl at noon.
“And you had the bank in mind from the first!” he cries.
“Possibly,” says Aaron.
“Let me tell you one thing, Colonel Burr,” and the Jay attorney general cracks and snaps his teeth in quite an owlish way; “if the authorities at Albany had guessed your purpose, you would never have received your charter. No, sir; your prayer for incorporation would have been refused.”
“Possibly!” says Aaron.
All these divers and sundry preparational matters, the subjection of the Clintons and the Livingstons, the political alignment of the Buck-tails swigging their cider at Martlings, and the launching of the Manhattan Bank to the yellow end that a supply of gold be assured, have in their accomplishment taken time. It is long since Aaron looked in at the Federal capitol, where the Hamilton-guided Adams is performing as President, with all those purple royalties which surrounded Washington, and Jefferson is abolishing ruffles, donning pantaloons, introducing shoelaces, cutting off his cue, and playing the democrat Vice-President at the other end of government. Aaron resolves upon a visit to these opposite ones. Jefferson must be his candidate; Adams will be the candidate of the foe. He himself is to manage for the one, while Hamilton will lead for the other. Such the situation, he holds it the part of a cautious sagacity to glance in at these worthies, pulling against one another, and discover to what extent and in what manner their straining and tugging may be used to make or mar the nation’s future. Hamilton is to be destroyed. To annihilate him a battle must be fought; and Aaron, preparing for that strife, is eager to discover aught in the present conduct or standing of either Adams or Jefferson which can be molded into bullets to bring down the enemy.
Aaron’s friend Van Ness goes with him, sharing his seat in the coach. Some worth-while words ensue. They begin by talking of Hamilton; as talk proceeds, Aaron gives a surprising hint of the dark but unsuspected bitterness of his feeling – a feeling which goes beyond politics, as the acridities of that savage science are understood and recognized.
Van Ness is wonder-smitten.
“Your enmity to Hamilton,” he says tentatively, “strikes deeper then than mere politics.”
“Sir,” returns Aaron slowly, the old-time black, ophidian sparkle flashing up in his eyes, “the deepest sentiment of my nature is my hatred for that man. Day by day it grows upon me. Also, it is he who furnishes the seed and the roots of it. Everywhere he vilifies me. I hear it east, north, west, south. I am his mania – his ‘phobia’. In his slanderous mouth I am ‘liar,’ ‘thief,’ and ‘scoundrel rogue.’ In such connection I would have you to remember that I, on my side, give him, and have given him, the description of a gentleman.”
“To be frank, sir,” returns Van Ness thoughtfully, “I know every word you speak to be true, and have often wondered that you did not parade our epithetical friend at ten paces, and refute his mendacities with convincing lead.”
Aaron’s look is hard as granite. There is a moment of silence. “Kill him!” he says at last, as though repeating a remark of his companion; “kill him! Yes; that, too, must come! But it must not come too soon for my perfect vengeance! First I shall uproot him politically; every hope he has shall die! I shall thrust him from his high places! When he lies prone, broken, powerless! – when he is spat upon by those in whose one-time downcast, servile presence he strutted lord paramount! – when his past is scoffed at, his future swallowed up! – when his word is laughed at and his fame become a farce! – then, when every fang of defeat pierces and poisons him, then I say should be the hour to talk of killing! That hour is not yet. I am a revengeful man, Van Ness – I am an artist of revenge! Believing as I do that with the going of the breath, all goes! – that for the Man there is no hereafter as there has been no past! – I must garner my vengeance on earth or forever lose it. So I take pains with my vengeance; and having, as I tell you, a genius for it, my vengeful pains shall find their dark and full-blown harvest. Hamilton, for whom my whole heart flows away in hate! – I shall build for him a pyramid of misery while he lives; and I shall cap that pyramid with his death – his grave! I can see, as one who looks down a lane, what lies before. I shall take from him every scrap of that power which is his soul’s food – strip him of each least fragment of position! When he has nothing left but life, I’ll wrest that from him. Long years after he is gone I’ll walk this earth; and I shall find a joy in his absence, and the thought that by my hand and my will he was made to go, beyond what the friendship of man or the favor of woman could bring me. Kill him! There is a grist in the hopper of my purposes, friend, and the mill stones of my plans are grinding!”
