Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.
Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a
means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed
them unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of
the man who trusted him as a friend.

Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years.
His last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating
because it has often been misunderstood.

Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped
with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband died
while she was still quite young, and she then married a French
wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man
of much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in
New York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall
he and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the
salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.

Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel
returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and
paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing
in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own
right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel
returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.

Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he
died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not
very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal
advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr. She
had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now
seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He
was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically
he was straight, active, and vigorous.

A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed
all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead
her in to dinner, he said:

"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours."

These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and finally
proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less
flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to
discourage a man like Aaron Burr.

"I shall come to y