Page:The amorous intrigues and adventures of Aaron Burr.pdf/96

 wild flowers; but in such manner as if it had been a blind act of desperation on his part. He quickly removed the drapery from the limbs, and the moonbeams played upon the loveliest feminine proportions which the most fervid indignation ever conceived.

He plunged into the midst of Paradise: he tasted the sweetest draught that woman ever vouchsafed to man. He never doubted, for a moment, that Mrs. Blennerhassett had loved him long and tenderly, so delighted was she by his embrace, that she swooned in his arms.

From that time forward, the partition wall was broken down, and the colonel took his fill of love whenever he visited Blennerhassett Island.

Mr. Blennerhassett was a man of elegant taste, and several times while his lady and Burr were engaged in voluptuous pleasure, in some retired nook, on the island, they could hear the notes of Blennerhassett's flute, as he accompanied their performance with the most delightful and love-inspiring music.

On that beautiful Island, Colonel Burr spent, perhaps, the happiest portion of his life. There he met the loveliest and the gayest women and the most devoted adherents, and admirers, of his military genius.

Whispers soon began to be circulated, in the neighborhood of the island that Burr and Blennerhassett were plotting treason—that the arms of their recruits were to be turned against their own country—that Burr meditated the violent disruption of the United States.

Next came the alarming tidings that the officers of justice were about to visit the island and arrest the conspirators. They came. The leaders of the expedition fled, and their followers were scattered and disheartened.

Colonel Burr was, after a hot pursuit, discovered and arrested on the Tombigbee river, in the territory of Mississippi. He was conveyed to Richmond, Va., where he arrived on the 26th of March, 1807.

He was bailed until the 22d of May, when the court was convened for his trial. Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States adopted every means to procure his conviction, and compass his ignominious death.

Wilkinson had received a letter in cipher from Mr. Swartwout which he first altered and then deciphered. Wilkinson swore that the translation was correct, but the grand jury discovered the forgery and compelled Wilkinson to acknowledge his guilt.

Though Mr. Jefferson knew that Wilkinson was a Spanish pensioner, and not withstanding his perjury before the grand jury, yet Mr. Jefferson sustained and countenanced him as a proper instrument by which to effect his purposes against Burr.

Other generals were arrested; but only Burr and Blennerhassett were brought on to trial.

Burr was subjected to unnumbered outrages and cruelties, but the jury brought in a verdict, thus: