for you, and making a thousand excuses where she cannot deny; and if you die, as I fear you have lived, unreconciled to the God of your fathers, it will be in her heart to offer up her very soul for you, and to pray that God will impute all your sins to her, and give you heaven. Oh, I know this, because I have felt it in my own heart!" and Mary threw herself passionately down into a chair, and broke into an agony of uncontrolled sobbing.
Burr turned away, and stood looking through the window; tears were dropping silently, unchecked by the cold, hard pride which was the evil demon of his life.
It is due to our human nature to believe that no man could ever have been so passionately and enduringly loved and revered by both men and women as he was, without a beautiful and lovable nature;—no man ever demonstrated more forcibly the truth, that it is not a man's natural constitution, but the use he makes of it, which stamps him as good or vile.
The diviner part of him was weeping, and the cold, proud demon was struggling to regain his lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair, inspired child who had been speaking to him seemed to shake his heart,—he felt as if he could have fallen on his knees to her; and yet that stoical habit which was the boast of his life, which was the sole wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was slowly stealing back round his heart,—and he pressed his lips together, resolved that no word should escape till he had fully mastered himself.
In a few moments Mary rose with renewed calmness and dignity, and, approaching him, said,—
"Before I wish you good-morning, Mr. Burr, I must ask pardon for the liberty I have taken in speaking so very plainly."
"There is no pardon needed, my dear child," said Burr, turning and speaking very gently, and with a face expressive of a softened concern; "if you have told me harsh truths, it was with gentle intentions;—I only hope that I may prove, at least by the future, that I am not altogether so bad as you imagine. As to the friend whose name has been passed between us, no man can go beyond me in a sense of her real nobleness; I am sensible how little I can ever deserve the sentiment with which she honors me. I am ready, in my future course, to obey any commands that you and she may think proper to lay upon me."
"The only kindness you can now do her," said Mary, "is to leave her. It is impossible that you should be merely friends;—it is impossible, without violating the holiest bonds, that you should be more. The injury done is irreparable; but you can avoid adding another and greater one to it."
Burr looked thoughtful.
"May I say one thing more?" said Mary, the color rising in her cheeks.
Burr looked at her with that smile that always drew out the confidence of every heart.
"Mr. Burr," she said, "you will pardon me, but I cannot help saying this: You have, I am told, wholly renounced the Christian faith of your fathers, and build your whole life on quite another foundation. I cannot help feeling that this is a great and terrible mistake. I cannot help wishing that you would examine and reconsider."
"My dear child, I am extremely grateful to you for your remark, and appreciate fully the purity of the source from which it springs. Unfortunately, our intellectual beliefs are not subject to the control of our will. I have examined, and the examination has, I regret to say, not had the effect you would desire."
Mary looked at him wistfully; he smiled and bowed,—all himself again; and stopping at the door, he said, with a proud humility,—
"Do me the favor to present my devoted regard to your friend; believe me, that hereafter you shall have less reason to complain of me."
He bowed, and was gone.
An eye-witness of the scene has related, that, when Burr resigned his seat as President of his country's Senate, an object of peculiar political bitterness and obloquy, almost all who listened to him had made up their minds that he was an utterly faithless, unprincipled man; and yet, such was his singular and peculiar personal power, that his short farewell-address melted the whole assembly into tears, and his most embittered adversaries were charmed into a momentary enthusiasm of admiration.
It must not be wondered at, therefore, if our simple-hearted, loving Mary strangely found all her indignation against him gone, and herself little disposed to criticize the impassioned tenderness with which Madame de Frontignac still regarded him.
We have one thing more that we cannot avoid saying, of two men so singularly in juxtaposition as Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins. Both had a perfect logic of life, and guided themselves with an inflexible rigidity by it. Burr assumed individual pleasure to be the great object of human existence; Dr. Hopkins placed it in a life altogether beyond self. Burr rejected all sacrifice; Hopkins considered sacrifice as the foundation of all existence. To live as far as possible without a disagreeable sensation was an object which Burr proposed to himself as the summum bonum, for which he drilled down and subjugated a nature of singular richness. Hopkins, on the other hand, smoothed the asperities of a temperament naturally violent and fiery by a rigid discipline which guided it entirely above the plane of self-indulgence; and, in the pursuance of their great end, the one watched against his better nature as the other did against his worse. It is but fair, then, to take their lives as the practical workings of their respective ethical creeds.
CHAPTER XXXIII
We owe our readers a digression at this point, while we return for a few moments to say a little more of the fortunes of Madame de Frontignac, whom we left waiting with impatience for the termination of the conversation between Mary and Burr. "Enfin, chère Sybille," said Madame de Frontignac, when Mary came out of the room, with her cheeks glowing and her eye flashing with a still unsubdued light, "te voilà encore! What did he say, mimi?—did he ask for me?"
"Yes," said Mary, "he asked for you."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him that you wished me to excuse you."
"How did he look then?—did he look surprised?"
"A good deal so, I thought," said Mary.
"Allons, mimi,—tell me all you said, and all he said." "Oh," said Mary, "I am the worst person in the world; in fact, I cannot remember anything that I have said; but I told him that he must leave you, and never see you any more."
"Oh, mimi, never!"
Madame de Frontignac sat down on the side of the bed with such a look of utter despair as went to Mary's heart.
"You know that it is best, Virginie; do you not?"
"Oh, yes, I know it; mais pourtant, c'est dur comme la mort. Ah, well, what shall Virginie do now?"
"You have your husband," said Mary.
"Je ne l'aime point," said Madame de Frontignac.
"Yes, but he is a good and honorable man, and you should love him."
"Love is not in our power," said Madame de Frontignac.
"Not every kind of love," said Mary, "but some kinds. If you have a kind, indulgent friend who protects you and cares for you, you can be grateful to him, you can try to make him happy, and in time you may come to love him very much. He is a thousand times nobler man, if what you say is true, than the one who has injured you so."
"Oh, Mary!" said Madame de Frontignac, "there are some cases where we find it too easy to love our enemies."
"More
