Kitabı oku: «An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XVI – THE SWEETNESS OF REVENGE
WHILE Aaron flourishes with Senate gavel, and Hamilton mourns his downfall at the Grange, new men are springing up and new lines forming. The Federalists disappear in the presidential going down of the wooden Adams; Aaron, by that one crushing victory, annihilated them. The new alignment in New York is personal rather than political, and becomes the merest separation of Aaron’s friends from Aaron’s enemies.
At the head of the latter, De Witt Clinton, nephew to old North-of-Ireland Clinton, takes his stand. Being modern, Clinton starts a newspaper, the American Citizen, and places a scurrilous dog named Cheetham in charge. As a counterweight, Aaron launches the Morning Chronicle, with Peter Irving editor, and his brother, young Washington Irving, as its leading writer. Now descends a war of ink, that is recklessly acrimonious and not at all merry.
Under that spur of feverish ink, the two sides fall to dueling with the utmost assiduity. Hamilton’s son Philip insults Mr. Eaker, a lawyer friend of Aaron; and the insulted Mr. Eaker gives up the law for one day to parade young Hamilton at the conventional ten paces. It is all highly honorable, all highly orthodox; and young Hamilton is killed in a way which reflects credit on those concerned.
Aaron’s lieutenant, John Swartwout, fastens a quarrel upon De Witt Clinton, for sundry ink utterances of the latter’s dog-of-types, Cheetham. The two cross the river to a spot of convenient seclusion.
“I wish it were your chief instead of you!” cries Clinton, who is not fine in his politenesses.
“So do I,” responds Swartwout, being of a rudeness to match Clinton’s. “For he is a dead shot, and would infallibly kill you; while I am the poorest hand with a pistol among the Buck-tails.”
The bickering pair are placed. They fire and miss. A second, and yet a third time their lead flies shamefully wide. At the fourth shot Clinton saves his credit by wounding Swartwout in the leg. The stubborn Swartwout demands a fifth fire, and Clinton plants a second bullet within two inches of the first.
“Are you satisfied?” asks Mr. Riker, who acts for Clinton.
“I am not,” returns Swartwout the stubborn. “Your man must retract, or continue the fight. Kill or be killed, I am prepared to shoot out the afternoon with him.”
At this, both Clinton’s fortitude and manners break down together, and, refusing to either fight on or apologize, he walks off the field. This nervous extravagance creates a scandal among our folk of hectic sensibilities, and shakes the Clinton standing sorely. He is promptly challenged by Senator Dayton – an adherent of Aaron’s – but evades that statesman at further loss to his reputation.
Meanwhile Robert Swartwout, brother to the wounded Swartwout, calls out Mr. Riker, who acted for Clinton against the stubborn one, and has the pleasure of dangerously wounding that personage. Also, Editor Coleman of the Evening Post, weary with that felon scribe, goes after type-dog Cheetham of Clinton’s American Citizen; whereat dog Cheetham flies yelping.
This last so disturbs Harbor Master Thompson of the Clinton forces, that he offers to take type-dog Cheetham’s place. Editor Coleman being agreeable, they fight in a snowstorm in (inappropriately) Love’s Lane – it will be University Place later – and the port loses a harbor master at the first fire.
Aaron, gaveling the Senate in the way it should legislatively go, pays no apparent heed to the smoky doings of his warlike subordinates. He never takes his eyes from Hamilton, however; and, if that retired publicist, complaining in his garden, would but cast his glance that way, he might read in their black ophidian depths a saving warning. But Hamilton is blind or mad, and thinks only on what he may do to injure Aaron, and never once on what that perilous Vice-President might be carrying on the shoulder of his purposes.
Hamilton devotes his garden leisure to vilifying Aaron. He goes stark staring raving Aaron-mad; at the mention of the name he pours out a muddy stream of slander. In talk, in print, in what letters he indites, Aaron is accused of every infamy. There is nothing so preposterously vile that he does not charge him with it. Aaron looks on and listens with a grim, evil smile, saying nothing. It is as though he but waits for Hamilton’s offenses to ripen in their accumulation, as one waits for apples to ripen on a tree.
At last the hour of harvest comes; Aaron leaves Washington for Richmond Hill, and sends for his friend Van Ness.
“You once marveled at my Hamilton moderation – wondered that I did not stop his slanders with convincing lead?”
“Yes,” says Van Ness.
“You shall wonder no longer, my friend. The hour of his death is about to strike.”
Van Ness breaks into a gale of protest. Hamilton, beaten, disgraced, deposed, is in political exile! Aaron, powerful, victorious, is on the crest of fortune! There is no fairness, no equality in an exchange of shots under such circumstances! Thus runs the opposition of Van Ness.
“In short,” he concludes, “it would be a fight downhill – a fight that you, in justice to yourself, have no right to make. Who is Alexander Hamilton? Nobody – a beaten nobody! Who is Aaron Burr? The second officer of the nation, on his sure way to a White House! Let me say, sir, that you must not risk so much against so little.”
“There is no risk; for I shall kill the man. I shall live and he shall die.”
“Cannot you see? There is the White House! Adams went from the Vice-Presidency to the Presidency; Jefferson went from the Vice-Presidency to the Presidency; you will do the same. It’s as though the White House were already yours. And you would throw it away for a shot at this broken, beaten, disregarded man! For let me tell you, sir; kill Hamilton and you kill your chance of being President. No one may hope to go into the White House on the back of a duel.”
About Aaron’s mouth twinkles a pale smile. It lights up his face with a cold dimness, as a will-o’-the-wisp lights up the midnight blackness of a wood.
“You have a memory only for what I lose. You forget what I gain.”
“What you gain?”
“Ay, friend, what I gain. I shall gain vengeance; and I would sooner be revenged than be President.”
“Now this is midsummer madness!” wails Van Ness. “To throw away a career such as yours is simple frenzy!”
“I do not throw away a career; I begin one.”
Van Ness stares; Aaron goes slowly on, as though he desires every word to make an impression.
“Listen, my friend; I’ve been preparing. Last week I closed out all my houses and lands! to John Jacob Astor for one hundred and forty thousand dollars. The one lone thing I own is Richmond Hill – the roof we sit beneath. I’d have sold this, but I did not care to attract attention. There would have come questions which I’m not ready to answer.”
Van Ness fills a glass of Cape, and settles himself to hear; he sees that this is but the beginning.
Aaron proceeds: “As we sit here to-night, Napoleon has been declared hereditary Emperor of the French. It has been on its way for months, and the next packet will bring us the news.”
“And what have the Corsican and his empire to do with us?”
“A President,” continues Aaron, ignoring the question, “is not comparable to an emperor. The Presidential term is but a stunted thing – in four years, eight at the most, your President comes to his end. And what is an ex-President? Look at Adams, peevish, disgruntled – unhappy in what he is, because he remembers what he was. To be a President is well enough. To be an ex-President is to seek to satisfy present hunger with the memories of banquets eaten years ago. For myself, I would sooner be an emperor; his throne is his for life, and becomes his son’s or his grandson’s after him.”
“What does this lead to?” asks Van Ness, vastly puzzled. “Admitting your imperial preferences, how are they applicable here and now?”
“Let me show you,” responds Aaron, still slow and measured and impressive. “What is possible in the East is possible in the West; what has been done in Europe may be done in America. Napoleon comes to Paris – lean, epileptic, poor, unknown, not even French. To-day he is emperor. Also” – this with a laugh which, however, does not prevent Van Ness from seeing that Aaron is deeply serious – “also, he is two inches shorter than myself.”
Van Ness leans back and makes a little gesture with his hand, as who should say: “Continue!”
“Very well! Would it be a stranger story if I, Aaron Burr, were to found an empire in the West – if I became Aaron I, as the Corsican has become Napoleon I?”
“You do not talk of overturning our government?” This in tones of wonder, and not without some flash of angry horror.
“Don’t hold me so dull. The people of this country are unfitted for king or emperor. They would throw down a thousand thrones while you set up one. I’ve studied races and peoples. Let me give you a word; it will serve should you go to nation building. Never talk of crowns or thrones to blue-eyed or gray-eyed men. They are inimical, in the very seeds of their natures, to thrones and crowns.”
“England?”
“England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland are monarchies only in name. In fact and spirit they are republics. If you would have king or emperor in very truth, you must go to your black-eyed folk. Setting this country aside, if you cast a glance toward the southwest, you will behold a people who should be the very raw materials of an empire.”
“Mexico!” exclaims the astonished Van Ness.
“Ay, Mexico! There is nothing which Napoleon Bonaparte has done in France, which Aaron Burr may not do in Mexico. I would have the flower of this country at my back. Indeed, it should be easier to ascend the throne of the Montezumas than of the Bourbons. I believe, too – for I think he would feel safer with a brother emperor in the West – I might count on Napoleon’s help for that climbing. However, we overrun the hunt” – Aaron seems to recall himself like one who comes out of a dream – “I am thinking not on empire, but vengeance. I have thrown out a rude picture of my plans, however, because I hope to have your company in them. Also, I wanted to show how utterly in my heart I have given up America and an American career. It is Mexico and the throne of an emperor, not Washington and the chair of a President, at which I aim. I am laying my foundations, not for four years, not for eight years, but for life. I shall be Aaron I, Emperor of Mexico; with my grandson, Aaron Burr Alston, to follow me as Aaron II. There; that should do for ‘Aaron and empire.’” This, with a return to the cynical: “Now let us get to Hamilton and vengeance. The scoundrel has spat his toad-venom on my name and fame for twenty years; the turn shall now be mine.”
Van Ness is silent; the glimpses he has been given of Aaron’s high designs have tied his tongue.
Aaron gets out a letter. “Here,” he says; “you will please carry that to Hamilton. It marks the beginning of my revenge. I base it on excerpts taken from a printed letter written by Dr. Cooper, who says: ‘General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they look upon Colonel Burr as a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government. I could detail a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Colonel Burr.’ I demand,” concludes Aaron, “that he explain or account to me for having furnished such an ‘opinion’ to Dr. Cooper.”
Van Ness purses up his lips, and knots his forehead cogitatively.
“Why pitch upon this letter of Cooper’s as a casus belli?” he asks at last. “It is ambiguous, and involves a question of Cooper’s construction of English. If we had nothing better it might do; but there is no such pressure. Hamilton, on many recent occasions, in speeches and in print, has applied to you the lowest epithets.”
“You may recall, sir, that I once told you I was an artist of revenge. It is this very ambiguity I’m after. I would hook the fellow – hook him and play him as I would a fish! The man’s a coward. I saw it written on his face that day when, following ‘Long Island,’ he threw away his gun and stores. By coming at him with this ambiguity, he will hope in the beginning to secure himself by evasions. He will write; I shall respond; there will be quite a correspondence. Days will drag along in agony and torment to him. And all the time he cannot escape. From the moment I send him that letter he is mine. It is as if I had him in a narrow lane; he cannot get by me. On the other hand, if I come upon him, as you suggest, with some undeniable charge, it will all be over in a moment. He will be obliged at once to toe the peg. You now understand that I design only in this letter to hook him hard and fast. When I have so played him as to satisfy even my hatred, rest secure I’ll reel him in. He can no more avoid meeting me than he can avoid trembling when he contemplates the dark promise of that meeting. His wife would despise him, his very children cut him dead were he to creep aside.”
Van Ness goes with Aaron’s letter to Hamilton. The latter, as he reads it, cannot repress a start. The blood rushes from his face to his heart and back again; for, as though the blind were made to see, he realizes the snare into which he has walked – a snare that he himself has spread to his own undoing.
With an effort he commands his agitation. “You shall have my answer by the hand of Mr. Pendleton,” he says.
Hamilton’s reply, long and wordy, is two days on its way. As Aaron foretold, it is wholly evasive, and comes in its analysis to be nothing better than a desperate peering about for a hole through which its author may crawl, and drag with him what he calls his honor.
Aaron’s reply closes each last loophole of escape. “Your letter,” he says, “has furnished me new reasons for requiring a definite reply.”
Hamilton reads his doom in this; and yet he cannot consent to the sacrifice, but struggles on. He makes a second response, this time at greater length than before.
Aaron, implacable as Death, reads what Hamilton has written.
“I think we should close the business,” he says to Van Ness, as he gives him Hamilton’s letter. “It has been ten days since I sent my initial note, and I have had enough of vengeance in anticipation. And so for the last act.” Aaron dispatches Van Ness with a peremptory challenge. There being no gateway of relief, Hamilton is driven to accept. Even then comes a cry for time; Hamilton asks that the hour of final meeting be fixed ten further days away. Aaron smiles that pale smile of hatred made content, and grants the prayed-for delay.
The morning following the challenge and its acceptance, Pendleton appears with another note from Hamilton – who obviously prefers pens to pistols for the differences in hand. Aaron, smiling his pale smile of contented hate, refuses to receive it.
“There is,” he observes, “no more to be said on either side, a challenge having been given and accepted. The one thing now is to load the pistols and step off the ground.”
It is four days later, and the fight six days away. Aaron and Hamilton meet at a dinner given on Independence Day. Hamilton is hysterically gay, and sings his famous song, “The Drum.” Also, he never once looks at Aaron, who, dark and lowering and silent, the black serpent sparkle in his eye, seldom shifts his gaze from Hamilton. Aaron’s stare, remorseless, hungrily steadfast, is the stare of the tiger as it sights its prey.
Dr. Hosack calls on Aaron, where the latter sits alone at Richmond Hill. Wine is brought; the good doctor takes a nervous glass. He has a rosy, social face, has the good doctor, a face that tells of friendships and the genial board. Just now, however, he is out of spirits. Desperately setting down his wineglass, he flounders into the business that has brought him.
“I can hardly excuse my coming,” he says, “and I apologize before I state my errand. I would have you believe, too, that my presence here is entirely by my own suggestion.”
Aaron bows.
The good doctor explains that he has been called upon to go, professionally, to the fighting ground with Hamilton.
“That is how I became aware,” he concludes, “of what you have in train. I resolved to see you, and make one last effort at a peaceful solution.”
Aaron coldly shakes his head: “There can be no adjustment.”
“Think of his family, sir! Think of his wife and his seven children!”
“Sir, it is he who should have thought of them. You should have gone to him when he was maligning me. What? You know how this man has slandered me! He has spoken to you as he has to hundreds of others!” The good doctor looks guiltily uneasy. “And now I am asked to sit down with the scorn he has heaped upon me, because he has a family! Does it not occur to you, sir, that I, too, have a family? But with this difference: Should he fall, there will be eight to share the loss among them. If I fall, the blow descends on but one pair of loving shoulders, and those the slender shoulders of a girl.”
There is no hope: The good doctor goes his disappointed way.
The fighting grounds are a flat, grassy shelf of rock, under the heights of Weehawken. The morning is bright, with the July sun coming up over the bay. Hamilton, pale, like a man going open-eyed to death, takes his barge at the landing near the Grange. The good Dr. Hosack and his friend Pendleton are with him. The barge is pulled across to the grassy shelf, under the somber Weehawken heights.
The good doctor remains by the barge, while Hamilton, with friend Pendleton, ascends the rocky, shelving, shingly twenty feet to the place of meeting. They find Aaron and Van Ness awaiting them. Aaron touches his hat stiffly, and walks to the far end of the narrow grassy shelf.
Seconds Pendleton and Van Ness toss a dollar piece. Pendleton wins word and choice of position.
Ten paces are stepped off. Second Pendleton places his man at the up-the-river end of the six-foot grassy shelf. Aaron, pistol in hand, is given the other end. The word is to be:
“Present! – one – two – three – stop!” As the two stand in position, Aaron is confident, deadly, implacable; Hamilton looks the man already lost.
Seconds Pendleton and Van Ness retire out of range.
“Gentlemen, are you ready?”.
“Ready!” says Aaron.
“Ready!” says Hamilton.
There is a pause, heavy with death. Then comes:
“Present! – ”
There is a flash and a roar! – a double flash, a double roar! The smoke curls, the rocks echo! Hamilton, with a stifled moan, reels, clutches at nothing, and pitches forward on his face – shot through and through. The Hamilton lead, wild and high, cuts a twig above Aaron’s head.
Aaron takes a step toward his slain foe, and looks long and deep, like a man drinking. Van Ness comes up; Aaron tosses him the pistol, as folk toss aside a tool when the work is done – well done. Then he walks down to his barge, and shoves away for Richmond Hill, whose green peaceful cedars are smiling just across the river.
“It was worth the price, Van Ness,” says Aaron. “The taste of that immortal vengeance will never perish on my lips, nor its fragrance die out in my heart.”
CHAPTER XVII – AARON I, EMPEROR OF MEXICO
AARON sits placidly serene at Richmond Hill. Over his wine and his cigar, he reduces those dreams of empire to ink and paper. He maps out his design as architects draw plans and specifications for a house. His friends call – Van Ness, the stubborn Swart-wout, the Irvings, Peter and Washington.
Outside the serene four walls of Richmond Hill there goes up a prodigious hubbub of mourning – demonstrative if not deeply sincere. Hamilton, broken as a pillar of politics, was still a pillar of fashion. Was he not a Schuyler by adoption? Had he not a holding in Trinity? Therefore, come folk of powdered hair and silken hose, who deem it an opportunity to prove themselves of the town’s Vere de Veres. There dwells fashionable advantage in tear-shedding at the going out of an illustrious name. Such tear-shedding provides the noble inference that the illustrious one was “of us.” Alive to this, those of would-be fashion lapse into sackcloth and profound ashes, the sackcloth silk and the ashes ashes of roses. Also they arrange a public funeral at Trinity, and ask Gouverneur Morris, the local Mark Antony, to deliver an oration.
To the delicate sobbing of super-fashionable ones is added the pretended grief of Aaron’s Clintonian foes. They think to use the death of Hamilton for Aaron’s political destruction.
At no time does Aaron, serene with his wine and his cigar and his empire-planning, interpose by word or act to stem the current of real or spurious feeling. He heeds it no more, dwells on it no more than on the ebbing or flowing of the tides, muttering about the lawn’s shaven borders in front of Richmond Hill.
The duel is eleven days old. Aaron, accompanied by the faithful, stubborn Swartwout, takes barge for Perth Amboy. The stubborn, faithful one says “Good-by!” and returns; Aaron is received by his friend Commodore Truxton. With Truxton he talks “empire” all night. He counts on English ships, he says; being promised in secret by British Minister Merry in Washington. Truxton shall command that fleet.
Having set the sea-going Truxton to hoping, Aaron pushes on for Philadelphia. He meets a beautiful girl whom he calls “Celeste,” and to whom he does not speak of conquest or of empire. He remains a week in Philadelphia where, by word of Clinton’s scandalized American Citizen: “He walks openly about the streets!”
Then to St. Simon’s off the Georgia coast, guest of honor among polite Southern circles; and, from St. Simon’s across to South Carolina and the noble Alston mansion, to be welcomed by the lustrous Theo. Thus the summer wears into fall, full of honor and ease and love.
With the first light flurry of snow, Aaron, gavel in hand, calls the grave togaed ones to order. It is to be his last session; with the going out of Congress, his Vice-Presidential term will have its end. During those three Washington months which ensue, he dines with the President, goes among friends and enemies as of yore, and never is brow arched or glance averted. Instead, there is marked regard for him; folk compete to do him honor. On the last Senate day he delivers his address of farewell, and men pronounce it a marvel of dignity, wisdom, and polish. So he steps down from American official life; but not from American interest.
Aaron, throughout this last Washington winter, presses his plans of empire. He attaches to them scores of his Bucktail followers – the Swartwouts, Dr. Erick Bollman, the Ogdens, Marinus Willet, General Du Puyster. Among those of Congress who lend their ears and give their words are Mathew Lyon, and Senators Dayton and Smith.. These are weary of civilization and the peace that rusts. Their hearts are eager for conquest, and a clash with the rough, wilderness conditions of the West beyond the Mississippi.
It is evening; Aaron sits in his rooms at the Indian Queen. Outside the rain is falling; Pennsylvania Avenue wallows a world of mire. Slave Peter intrudes his black face to announce:
“Gen’man comin’-up, sah!”
Peter, the privileged, would introduce Guy of Warwick, or the great Dun Cow, with as little ceremony.
As Peter withdraws, a burly figure fills the doorway.
“Come in, General,” says Aaron.
General Wilkinson is among Aaron’s older acquaintances. They were together at Quebec. They were fellow cabalists against Washington in an hour of Valley Forge. Now they are hand to hilt for Mexico, and that throne-building upon which Aaron has fixed his heart. Also, Wilkinson is in present command of the military forces of the United States in the Southwest, with headquarters at Natchez and New Orleans; and, because of that army control, he is the keystone to the arch of Aaron’s plans.
The broad Wilkinson face glows at Aaron’s genial “Come in.” Its owner takes advantage of the invitation to draw a chair near the log fire, which the wet March night makes comfortable. Then he pours himself a glass of whisky.
Wilkinson is worth considering. He is paunchy, gross, noisy, vain, bragging, shallow, with a red, sweat-distilling face, and a nose that tells of the bottle. He wears to-night the uniform of his rank. His coat exhibits an exuberance of epaulette and an extravagance of gold braid that speak of tastes for coarse glitter. His iron-gray hair, shining with bear’s grease, matches his fifty years. In conversation he becomes a composite of Rabelais and Munchausen. As for holding wine or stronger liquor, he rivals the Great Tun of Heidelberg.
The stubborn Swartwout doesn’t like him. On a late occasion he expresses that dislike.
“To be frank, Chief,” observes the blunt Bucktail, who, because of Aaron’s headship of the Tammany organization, always addresses him as “Chief” – “to be frank, I believe your friend Wilkinson to be as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”
“You are right, sir,” says Aaron; “he is both dishonest and treacherous. It was he who uncovered our plans to unhorse Washington, by ‘blabbing’ them, as Conway called it, to Lord Stirling. Yes; dishonest and treacherous is Wilkinson.”
“Why, then, do you trust him?”
“Why do I trust him?” repeats Aaron. “For several sufficient reasons. He has been in and out of Mexico, and is as familiar with the country as I am with Richmond Hill. He is cheek and jowl with the Bishop of New Orleans; and I hope to attach the church to my enterprise. Most of all, he commands the United States forces in the Southwest. Moreover, I count his dishonesty and genius for double dealing as virtues. They should become of importance in my enterprise.
“As how?” demands the mystified Buck-tail.
“As follows: Mexico is rich in gold; I argue that his dishonest avarice will take him loyally with me, hand and glove, in the hope of loot. His treacherous talents should come finely into play in certain diplomacies that must be entered upon with Mexican officials, who will favor me. Likewise he should find them exercise in dealings with the war department here in Washington; for you can see, sir, that, in his dual rôles of filibusterer and military commander of the Southwest for this government, he is certain to be often in collision with himself.”
The stubborn Bucktail says no more, being too well drilled in deference to Aaron’s will and word. It is clear, however, that his distrust of the whisky-faced Wilkinson has not been put to sleep.
Wilkinson, as he swigs his whisky by Aaron’s fire, sits in happy ignorance of the distrustful Bucktail’s views. Confident as to his own high importance, he plunges freely into Aaron’s plans.
“Five hundred,” says Aaron, “full five hundred are agreed to go; and I have lists of five thousand stout young fellows besides, who should crowd round our standard at the whistle of the fife. The move now is to purchase eight hundred thousand acres on the Washita, as a base from which to operate and a pretext for bringing our people together. My excuse for recruiting them, you understand, will be that they are to settle on those eight hundred thousand Washita acres.”
“Eight hundred thousand acres!” This, between sips of whisky: “That should take a fortune! Where do you think to find the money?”
“It will come from New York, from Connecticut, from New Jersey, from everywhere – but most of it from my son-in-law, Alston, who is to mortgage his plantation and crops. He is worth a round million.”
“How do you succeed with the English?” asks Wilkinson, taking a new direction.
“It is as good as done. Merry, the British Minister, was with me yesterday. He has sent Colonel Williamson of his legation to London, to return by way of Jamaica and bring the English fleet to New Orleans. Truxton is to be given temporary command, and sail against Vera Cruz, where you and I must meet him with an army. When we have reduced Vera Cruz, and secured a port, we shall march upon the city of Mexico.”
Wilkinson helps himself to another glass.
Then he rubs his encarmined nose with a ruminative forefinger.
“Well,” he observes, “it will be a great venture! In New Orleans I’ll make you acquainted with Daniel Clark, an Englishman, who has the riches and almost the wisdom of Solomon. He’ll embrace the enterprise; once he does he’ll back it with his dollars. Clark himself is strong in ships; with his merchant fleet and his warehouses, he should keep us in provisions in Vera Cruz.”
“That is well bethought,” cries Aaron, eyes a-sparkle.
“Clark’s relations with the bishop are likewise close,” adds Wilkinson.
Taking a pull at the whisky, he runs off in a fresh direction.
“Give me your scheme in detail. We are not, I trust, to waste time with a claptrap democracy, nor engage in the popular tomfoolery of a republic?”
“The government, imperial in form, shall be styled the ‘Empire of Mexico.’ I shall be crowned Emperor Aaron I, and the crown made hereditary in the male line; which last will create my grandson, Aaron Burr Alston, heir presumptive.”
“And I?” interjects Wilkinson, his features doubly aglow with alcohol and interest. “What are to be my rank and powers?”
“You will be generalissimo of the army.”
“Second only to you?”
“Second only to me. Here; I’ve drawn an outline of the civil fabric we’re to set up. The government, as I’ve said, is to be imperial, myself emperor. There is to be a nobility of grandees, titles hereditary, who will sit as a parliament. The noble programme is this: Aaron I, emperor; Wilkinson, generalissimo of the forces; Alston, chief of the grandees and secretary of state; Theo, chief lady of the court and princess mother of the heir presumptive; Aaron Burr Alston, heir presumptive; Truxton, lord high admiral of the fleet. There will be ambassadors, ministers, consuls, and the usual furniture of government. The grandees should be limited to one hundred, and chosen from those whom we bring with us. There may be minor noble grades, drawn from ones powerful and friendly among the natives.”
Aaron and Wilkinson of the carnelian nose sit far into the watches of the night, discussing the great design. As the carnelianed one takes his leave, he says:
