He sees Hanover, Brunswick, Gottingen, Gotha, Weimar. At Weimar, Goethe brings him to his house, where he meets “the amiable, good Wieland,” and is dragged off by Goethe to the theater, and sits through a “serious comedy” with the Baroness de Stein. He is presented at court, and is welcomed by the grand duke—Goethe’s duke—and the grand duchess. Here, too, he falls temporarily in love with the noble d’Or, a beautiful lady of the ducal court. His love begins to alarm him; he fears he may wed the d’Or, remain in Weimar, and “lapse into a Dutchman.” To avoid this fate, he beats a hasty retreat to Erfurth. Being safe, he cheers his spirits by writing:
“Another interview, and I would have been lost! The danger was so imminent, and the d’Or so beautiful, that I ordered post horses, gave a crown extra to the postilions to whip like the devil, and lo! here I am in a warm room, with a neat, good bed, safe locked within four Erfurth walls, rejoicing and repining.”
As Aaron writes this, he lays aside his “repining” for the lovely d’Or, and so far emerges from his gloom as to “draw a dirk,” and put to thick-soled clattering flight one of the local police, who invades his room with the purpose of putting out the candle. Erfurth being a garrison town, lights are ordered “out” at nine o’clock. As a mark of respect to his dirk, however, Aaron’s candles are permitted to gutter and sputter unrebuked until long after midnight.
CHAPTER XXII—HOW AARON RETURNS HOME
THE belated passports arrive, and Aaron journeys to Paris. It is now with him as it was with the unfortunate gentleman, celebrated in Scripture, who went down into a certain city only to fall among thieves. Fouché orders his police to dog him. The post office is given instructions; his letters are stolen—those he writes as well as those he should receive.
What is at the bottom of all this French scoundrelism? Madison the weak is president in Washington. That is to say, he is called “president,” the actual power abiding in Mon-ticello with Jefferson, at whose political knee he was reared. Armstrong is Madison’s minister to France. Armstrong is a New York politician married to a Livingston, and, per incident, a promoted puppet of Jefferson’s. McRae is American consul at Paris—McRae, who sat at the back of Wirt and Hay during the Richmond trial. It is these influences, directed from Mon-ticello, which, in each of its bureaus, oppose the government of Napoleon to Aaron. By orders from Monticello, “every captain, French or American, is instructed to convey no letter or message or parcel for Colonel Burr. Also such captain is required to make anyone handing him a letter or parcel for delivery in the United States, to pledge his honor that it contains nothing from Colonel Burr.” In this way is Aaron shut off from his friends and his supplies. He writes in his diary:
“These vexations arise from the machinations of Minister Armstrong, who is indefatigable in his exertions to my prejudice, being goaded on by personal hatred, political rancor, and the native malevolence of his temper.”
Aaron waits on Savary, and finds that minister polite but helpless. He sees Fouché; the policeman is as polite and as helpless as Savary.