University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

As the door closed behind him, the countenance
of the President relaxed into a smile, indicative of
great satisfaction and self-applause, along with an
uncontrollable disposition to merriment. The smile
soon became a quiet laugh, which increased in violence,
without ever becoming loud, until he lay back
against the arm of the sofa, and covered his face
with his handkerchief. At length, his mirth exhausted
itself, and he sat erect, looking at the Minister
with the countenance of one about to make some
amusing communication. But he waited to be
spoken to, and remained silent. His minion took
the hint, and addressing himself to what he supposed
to be passing in his master's mind, said: “I beseech
your Excellency to tell me by what sleight, by what
tour de main, this hard knot about jurisdiction has
been made to slip as easily as a hangman's noose?
I feared we should have had to cut it with the sword,
and behold it unties itself.”

“How can you ask such a question?” said the
President, with mock gravity. “Did you not hear
the elaborate and lucid argument by which the Judge
proved incontestibly that it could not be unconstitutional
to do his duty? The wonder is how they ever
contrived to make a difficulty. Surely none who
shall ever hear that demonstration can doubt again.”

“But may I be permitted to ask by what means
such a flood of light has been poured upon his mind?
But yesterday he was dark as the moon in its perihelion.
Has the golden ray of additional favors
again caused its face to shine?”

“No,” said the President.

“No new emoluments to him or his?”

“None at all,” was the laughing answer.

“No new honors?”

“None; but the honor of doing additional duty,
for the first time in his life, without additional compensation.”

“In the name of witchcraft, then, what has
wrought upon him?”

“That I shall not tell you,” said the President,
still laughing. “That is my secret. That part of
my art you shall never know. It is one of the jokes
that a man enjoys the better for having it all to himself.
I keep it for my own diversion. It is a sort
of royal game. You, I am sure, may be satisfied
with your share in the sport, having been admitted
to hear that argument. It was a lesson in dialectics

worth a course at a German university. But come!
There is a time to laugh, and a time to be serious.
What do you propose on the subject of these Virginia
elections?”

“I propose,” said the Minister, “to distribute
some five hundred men in certain counties, with the
dispositions of which I have made myself acquainted,
to preserve order at the elections, as we should say
to the uninitiated; but in plain English, to control
them. They will succeed in this, or provoke violence.
Either way, we carry our point. We prevail
in the elections, or we involve the members elect in
a charge of treason. I think we may trust Judge
Baker for the rest. The more dangerous of our enemies
will thus fall under the edge of the law, and the
less efficient, if not left in a minority, will be powerless
for want of leaders.”

“But the scene of action,” said the President,
“is close to the line. The offenders may escape
into North Carolina, and from thence keep up a communication
with their friends. They may even venture
to Richmond at a critical moment, and effect
their great purpose, or they may adjourn to some
place of greater security.”

“It will certainly be necessary,” said the Minister,
“to guard against that, by increasing the number
of troops at the seat of government. Besides, if
we can but get one day to ourselves, their chance of

legislative action may be broken up by adjournment
sine die.”

“Then, with so many points in the game in our
favor,” replied the President, “we have but to play
it boldly and we must win. It shall go hard, too, if,
in the end, we do not make this superfluous State Legislature,
this absurd relic of imperium in imperio,
abolish itself. At all events, the course of conduct
which they will necessarily pursue, must sink the body
in public estimation, and dispose the people to acquiesce
in the union of all power in the hands of the
Central Government. We can then restore them all
the benefits of real and efficient local legislation, by
erecting these degraded sovereignties into what they
ought always to have been—municipal corporations,
exercising such powers as we choose to grant.”

Some farther conversation ensued, in which details
were settled. A minute was made of the points
at which troops should be stationed; the number of
men to be placed at each; and the corps from which
they were to be drawn. It was left to the Minister
to fix on proper persons to command each party, and
to devise instructions as to the part to be acted. In
some places it was proposed simply to awe the elections
by the mere presence of the military. In some,
to control them by actual or threatened violence.
In others, insult was to be used, tumult excited, resistance
provoked, and dangerous men drawn in, to
commit acts which might be denounced as criminal.

Having thus possessed himself of his master's will,
this modern Sejanus withdrew to give necessary
orders for effecting it.

“The only truly wise man, that I know in the
world,” said the President, looking after him. “The
only one who knows man as he is; who takes no
account of human virtue, but as one form of human
weakness. In his enemies, it gives him a power
over them which he always knows how to use. In
his instruments, he desires none of it. Why cannot
I profit more by his instruction and example? Fool
that I am! I will try to practise a lesson.”

He rung the bell, and directed that the Minister
should be requested to return.

He had not yet left the palace, and soon re-appeared.
As he entered, the President said: “This
young Trevor! He has talent, has he not?”

“Talent of every kind,” said the Minister.

“That he has a superabundance of what fools
call honor and gallantry, I happen to know. I suppose
his other virtues are in proportion?”

“I suspect so, from the example of the father, and
all I can learn of the son.”

“Can you then doubt of his ultimate course? or
even that of his father? Do you doubt that if the
standard of rebellion is once raised, the young man
will be found fighting under it, with the old man's
approbation?”

“Not at all. I know no man who would raise it

sooner than himself, after he has had time to be
thoroughly indoctrinated by his uncle.”

“Then the sooner the better. He is but a cockerel
yet. What if he can be brought to commit himself
before his spurs have acquired their full length?”

“Nothing could be more judicious, and nothing
easier.”

“How would you go about it?”

“Let him have a letter neither accepting nor rejecting.
Intimating the necessity of farther investigation
of his accounts, &c. &c. before we let him
off, and requiring him, for the convenience of farther
correspondence, to remain at the place from whence
his letter is dated. Keep him fretted in this way
until the election is near at hand, and, a day or two
before, let him receive a letter accepting his resignation.
My life upon it, he will spring to his destruction
like a bow, when the string is cut, that snaps
by its own violence.”

“You are right,” said the President. “That will
do. Much will depend on the style of that letter.
You have your hands too full to be troubled with
such things, or I should ask you to do what no man
can do so well. But you have your pupils, who
have learned of you to say what is to be said, so as
just to produce the desired effect, and no other.”

The instrument of the royal pleasure again withdrew.
Again the President looked after him, and
said, musingly: “Were I not myself, I would be

that man. I should even owe him a higher compliment
could one be devised, for, but for him, I had
never been what I am. What then? Is he the
creator, and am I his creature? No. I am wrong.
Could he have made himself what I am, he would
have done so. He has but fulfilled my destiny, and
I his. He has made me what I alone was capable
of becoming, and I, in turn, have made him all that
he ever can be. I owe him nothing, therefore; and
should he ever be guilty of any thing like virtue,
there is nothing to hinder me from lopping off any
such superfluous excrescence, even if his head should
go with it. But he is in no danger on that score. If
he held his life by no other tenure, his immortality
would be sure.”

While the master thus soliloquized, the minion
was wending his way home, to the performance of
the various duties assigned him. Our present business
is with the letter to Douglas alone. The pen
of a ready and skillful writer was employed, the
document was prepared, submitted to the inspection
of the President, approved by him, signed “by order”
by the Secretary of War, committed to the
mail, and forwarded to Douglas. Let us accompany
it.