a faithful sergeant, the sole passenger
embarked for New Orleans. In frequent conference with Wilkinson he had
amplified and enforced the arguments broached at the first interview.
On the day set for the statesman's departure, the two men spoke
together, very confidentially.

"Good-bye, Aaron; I augur well of your undertaking. The auspices are
favorable. We are engaged in a scheme full of danger, requiring
enterprise; but, if successful, fraught with fortune and glory."

"General, we are engaged, not in a scheme, but in a sublime exploit.
We are to create an ideal commonwealth. The materials are ready. I go
to take seizin of the grandest dominion on the curve of the globe.
Military force will be requisite to sustain civil polity. The names
Burr and Wilkinson are linked together in the chain of destiny.
Farewell, and God bless you. When I return, I will hasten to join you
at St. Louis, and give a full report of my stewardship."

With rhetoric like this, the parting guest closed his valedictory. His
barge was soon under way. Down the calm Ohio, down the solemn
Mississippi fared Aaron Burr, bound for the prodigal South. Swept
along by the urgent stream, his boat seemed the plaything of fate, and
the unstable element upon which it rode and rocked and trembled, he
likened to human life, fleeting, turbulent, treacherous, yet grandly
beautiful. Yielding to that mood in which the judgment and the will
are suspended, and the passive brain is played upon by every sight and
sound, he sat in an easy chair smoking, lost in sensuous languor, like
an Asian prince. He was, for the time, possessed by the sensation of
being royal. He enjoyed by anticipation the prerogatives of
sovereignty, the power, the luxury, the voluptuous pleasure. The
objects of his ambition appeared then how easy of attainment! To
accomplish seemed no more difficult than to desire. The stream was
running his way, and the wind was blowing his way. As surely as the
Mississippi goes to the Mexican Gulf, would destiny waft Burr to the
ocean of his desire. Imaginations so extravagant, courted in solitude
and fed by indolence, served to beguile the days of the long voyage
from Fort Massac to New Orleans.

At last the barge rounded into port, late in the afternoon of a
perfect summer day. Aaron the First, standing upon deck, was coming
unto his own; or rather, the city came floating out to meet her king.
The bending shore which gives the name Crescent City to the emp