University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.
LAST WORDS.

We know it is fashionable to drop the curtain
over a newly married pair, as they recede from the
altar; but we cannot but hope our readers may
by this time have enough of interest in our little
history to wish for a few words on the lot of the
personages whose acquaintance they have thereby
made.

The conjectures of Miss Prissy in regard to the
grand house which James was to build for his
bride were as speedily as possible realized. On a
beautiful elevation, a little out of the town of
Newport, rose a fair and stately mansion, whose
windows overlooked the harbor, and whose wide,
cool rooms were adorned by the constant presence
of the sweet face and form which has been the
guiding star of our story. The fair poetic maiden,
the seeress, the saint, has passed into that appointed
shrine for woman, more holy than cloister,
more saintly and pure than church or altar, — a
Christian home. Priestess, wife, and mother, there

she ministers daily in holy works of household
peace, and by faith and prayer and love redeems
from grossness and earthliness the common toils
and wants of life.

The gentle guiding force that led James Marvyn
from the maxims and habits and ways of this
world to the higher conception of an heroic and
Christ-like manhood was still ever present with
him, gently touching the springs of life, brooding
peacefully with dovelike wings over his soul, and
he grew up under it noble in purpose and strong
in spirit. He was one of the most energetic and
fearless supporters of the Doctor in his life-long
warfare against an inhumanity which was intrenched
in all the mercantile interests of the day,
and which at last fell before the force of conscience
and moral appeal.

Candace in time transferred her allegiance to
the growing family of her young master and mistress,
and predominated proudly in gorgeous raiment
with her butterfly turban over a rising race
of young Marvyns. All the care not needed by
them was bestowed on the somewhat querulous
old age of Cato, whose never-failing cough furnished
occupation for all her spare hours and
thought.

As for our friend the Doctor, we trust our readers
will appreciate the magnanimity with which he
proved a real and disinterested love, in a point where

so many men experience only the graspings of a
selfish one. A mind so severely trained as his had
been brings to a great crisis, involving severe self-denial,
an amount of reserved moral force quite
inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control.
He was like a warrior whose sleep even was in
armor, always ready to be roused to the conflict.

In regard to his feelings for Mary, he made the
sacrifice of himself to her happiness so wholly
and thoroughly that there was not a moment of
weak hesitation, — no going back over the past, —
no vain regret. Generous and brave souls find a
support in such actions, because the very exertion
raises them to a higher and purer plane of existence.

His diary records the event only in these very
calm and temperate words: — “It was a trial to
me, — a very great trial; but as she did not deceive
me, I shall never lose my friendship for
her.”

The Doctor was always a welcome inmate in
the house of Mary and James, as a friend revered
and dear. Nor did he want in time a hearthstone
of his own, where a bright and loving face made
him daily welcome; for we find that he married
at last a woman of a fair countenance, and that
sons and daughters grew up around him.

In time, also, his theological system was published.

In that day, it was customary to dedicate
new or important works to the patronage of some
distinguished or powerful individual. The Doctor
had no earthly patron. Four or five simple lines
are found in the commencement of his work, in
which, in a spirit reverential and affectionate, he
dedicates it to our Lord Jesus Christ, praying Him
to accept the good, and to overrule the errors to
His glory.

Quite unexpectedly to himself, the work proved
a success, not only in public acceptance and esteem,
but even in a temporal view, bringing to
him at last a modest competence, which he accepted
with surprise and gratitude. To the last
of a very long life, he was the same steady, undiscouraged
worker, the same calm witness against
popular sins and proclaimer of unpopular truths,
ever saying and doing what he saw to be eternally
right, without the slightest consultation with
worldly expediency or earthly gain; nor did his
words cease to work in New England till the evils
he opposed were finally done away.

Colonel Burr leaves the scene of our story to
pursue those brilliant and unscrupulous political
intrigues so well known to the historian of those
times, and whose results were so disastrous to
himself. His duel with the ill-fated Hamilton, the
awful retribution of public opinion that followed,
and the slow downward course of a doomed

life are all on record. Chased from society,
pointed at everywhere by the finger of hatred,
so accursed in common esteem that even the publican
who lodged him for a night refused to accept
his money when he knew his name, heart-stricken
in his domestic relations, his only daughter
taken by pirates and dying amid untold horrors,
— one seems to see in a doom so much
above that of other men the power of an avenging
Nemesis for sins beyond those of ordinary
humanity.

But we who have learned of Christ may humbly
hope that these crushing miseries in this life
came not because he was a sinner above others, not
in wrath alone, — but that the prayers of the sweet
saint who gave him to God even before his birth
brought to him those friendly adversities, that thus
might be slain in his soul the evil demon of pride,
which had been the opposing force to all that was
noble within him. Nothing is more affecting than
the account of the last hours of this man, whom
a woman took in and cherished in his poverty
and weakness with that same heroic enthusiasm
with which it was his lot to inspire so many
women. This humble keeper of lodgings was told,
that, if she retained Aaron Burr, all her other lodgers
would leave. “Let them do it, then,” she said;
“but he shall remain.” In the same uncomplaining
and inscrutable silence in which he had borne the

reverses and miseries of his life did this singular
being pass through the shades of the dark valley
The New Testament was always under his pillow
and when alone he was often found reading it attentively;
but of the result of that communion
with higher powers he said nothing. Patient, gentle,
and grateful, he was, as to all his inner history,
entirely silent and impenetrable. He died
with the request, which has a touching significance,
that he might be buried at the feet of those parents
whose lives had finished so differently from
his own.

Shortly after Mary's marriage, Madame de Frontignac
sailed with her husband for home, where
they lived in a very retired way on a large estate
in the South of France. An intimate correspondence
was kept up between her and Mary for many
years, from which we shall give our readers a few
extracts. Her first letter is dated shortly after her
return to France.

“At last, my sweet Marie, you behold us in
peace after our wanderings. I wish you could see
our lovely nest in the hills, which overlook the
Mediterranean, whose blue waters remind me of
Newport harbor and our old days there. Ah, my

sweet saint, blessed was the day I first learned to
know you! for it was you, more than anything
else, that kept me back from sin and misery. I
call you my Sibyl, dearest, because the Sibyl was
a prophetess of divine things out of the Church;
and so are you. The Abbé says, that all true, devout
persons in all persuasions belong to the True
Catholic Apostolic Church, and will in the end be
enlightened to know it; what do you think of
that, ma belle? I fancy I see you look at me
with your grave, innocent eyes, just as you used
to; but you say nothing.

“I am far happier, ma Marie, than I ever thought
I could be. I took your advice, and told my husband
all I had felt and suffered. It was a very
hard thing to do; but I felt how true it was, as you
said, that there could be no real friendship without
perfect truth at bottom; so I told him all, and he
was very good and noble and helpful to me; and
since then he has been so gentle and patient and
thoughtful, that no mother could be kinder; and I
should be a very bad woman, if I did not love
him truly and dearly, — as I do.

“I must confess that there is still a weak, bleeding
place in my heart that aches yet, but I try to
bear it bravely; and when I am tempted to think
myself very miserable, I remember how patiently
you used to go about your house-work and spinning,
in those sad days when you thought your

heart was drowned in the sea; and I try to do
like you. I have many duties to my servants and
tenants, and mean to be a good chátelaine; and I
find, when I nurse the sick and comfort the poor,
that my sorrows are lighter. For, after all, Mary,
I have lost nothing that ever was mine, — only my
foolish heart has grown to something that it should
not, and bleeds at being torn away. Nobody but
Christ and His dear Mother can tell what this sorrow
is; but they know, and that is enough.”

The next letter is dated some three years after.

“You see me now, my Marie, a proud and
happy woman. I was truly envious, when you
wrote me of the birth of your little son; but now
the dear good God has sent a sweet little angel
to me, to comfort my sorrows and lie close to my
heart; and since he came, all pain is gone. Ah,
if you could see him! he has black eyes and
lashes like silk, and such little hands! — even his
finger-nails are all perfect, like little gems; and
when he puts his little hand on my bosom, I
tremble with joy. Since he came, I pray always,
and the good God seems very near to me. Now
I realize, as I never did before, the sublime thought
that God revealed Himself in the infant Jesus;
and I bow before the manger of Bethlehem where
the Holy Babe was laid. What comfort, what
adorable condescension for us mothers in that
scene! — My husband is so moved, he can scarce

stay an hour from the cradle. He seems to look
at me with a sort of awe, because I know how
to care for this precious treasure that he adores
without daring to touch. We are going to call
him Henri, which is my husband's name and that
of his ancestors for many generations back. I
vow for him an eternal friendship with the son of
my little Marie; and I shall try and train him up
to be a brave man and a true Christian. Ah,
Marie, this gives me something to live for! My
heart is full, — a whole new life opens before
me!”

Somewhat later, another letter announces the
birth of a daughter, — and later still, the birth of
another son; but we shall only add one more,
written some years after, on hearing of the great
reverses of popular feeling towards Burr, subsequently
to his duel with the ill-fated Hamilton.

“Ma chère Marie, — Your letter has filled me
with grief. My noble Henri, who already begins
to talk of himself as my protector, (these boys
feel their manhood so soon, ma Marie!) saw by my
face, when I read your letter, that something pained
me, and he would not rest till I told him something
about it. Ah, Marie, how thankful I then
felt that I had nothing to blush for before my
son! how thankful for those dear children whose
little hands had healed all the morbid places of
my heart, so that I could think of all the past

without a pang! I told Henri that the letter
brought bad news of an old friend, but that it
pained me to speak of it; and you would have
thought, by the grave and tender way he talked to
his mamma, that the boy was an experienced man
of forty, to say the least.

“But, Marie, how unjust is the world! how unjust
both in praise and blame! Poor Burr was
the petted child of society; yesterday she doted
on him, flattered him, smiled on his faults, and
let him do what he would without reproof; to-day
she flouts and scorns and scoffs him, and
refuses to see the least good in him. I know that
man, Mary, — and I know, that, sinful as he may
be before Infinite Purity, he is not so much more
sinful than all the other men of his time. Have I
not been in America? I know Jefferson; I knew
poor Hamilton, — peace be with the dead! Neither
of them had a life that could bear the sort of trial
to which Burr's is subjected. When every secret
fault, failing, and sin is dragged out, and held up
without mercy, what man can stand?

“But I know what irritates the world is that
proud, disdainful calm which will neither give sigh
nor tear. It was not that he killed poor Hamilton,
but that he never seemed to care! Ah, there
is that evil demon of his life, — that cold, stoical
pride, which haunts him like a fate! But I know
he does feel; I know he is not as hard at heart as

he tries to be; I have seen too many real acts of
pity to the unfortunate, of tenderness to the weak,
of real love to his friends, to believe that. Great
have been his sins against our sex, and God forbid
that the mothers of children should speak
lightly of them; but is not so susceptible a temperament,
and so singular a power to charm as he
possessed, to be taken into account in estimating
his temptations? Because he is a sinning man, it
does not follow that he is a demon. If any should
have cause to think bitterly of him, I should. He
trifled inexcusably with my deepest feelings; he
caused me years of conflict and anguish, such as he
little knows; I was almost shipwrecked; yet I will
still say to the last that what I loved in him was
a better self, — something really noble and good,
however concealed and perverted by pride, ambition,
and self-will. Though all the world reject
him, I still have faith in this better nature, and
prayers that he may be led right at last. There
is at least one heart that will always intercede
with God for him.”

It is well known, that, for many years after
Burr's death, the odium that covered his name was
so great that no monument was erected, lest it
should become a mark for popular violence. Subsequently,
however, in a mysterious manner, a
plain granite slab marked his grave; by whom

erected has been never known. It was placed in
the night by some friendly, unknown hand. A
laborer in the vicinity, who first discovered it,
found lying near the spot a small porte-monnaie,
which had perhaps been used in paying for the
workmanship. It contained no papers that could
throw any light on the subject, except the fragment
of the address of a letter on which was
written “Henri de Frontignac.”