"That he will," said Burr, and proceeded with his story, at the close of which he exclaimed, "I wish you could attend one of the meetings of the Mexican Society in New Orleans. Its object is to discuss means of emancipating Mexico. You should hear, as I have heard, the outspoken discontents of the creole population. They adore the institution of African slavery. They hate New England. They will not buy even a Yankee clock if it is adorned with an image of the Yankee Goddess of Liberty. But they are _mine_, every mother's son of them, and what is more important, every father's daughter of them. I took the city by storm, and the outlying provinces belong to us. We have a people and, virtually, an army. The moral conquest is complete. When the hour strikes for extending the borders of our conceded realm, you are the chosen Caesar." "Can we depend on David Clarke's co-operation?" "Why not? His interests are bound up in ours. We have a host of stanch adherents, in all parts of the country and on the high sea, and in Europe, soldiers, statesmen, capitalists. I need not name them to you. All these are to be kept in mind and treated with due consideration. Our enterprise is in its preliminary stage. The shrewd work of enlisting recruits must be intrusted to carefully selected captains. I have the ways and means clearly in my head. Every detail must be worked out in practice." "Burr, you are more circumspect than I gave you credit for being. There is always danger in the dark. Have you entertained the possibility of defection?" "I have measured my ground, and calculated the curve of my leap. I shall not fall into an abyss, or dash myself upon a rock. If we fail to sever the Union, and do not succeed in the conquest of Mexico, I have so masked our designs as to make them appear in the guise of innocent land-speculations on the Wachita river." XI. PALAFOX GROWS INSOLENT. Early in October Wilkinson's duties required him to visit the town of Genevive, some fifty miles south of St. Louis. The best cabin in a keelboat had been furnished in sumptuous style for the accommodation of the self-indulgent chief. Such was the attractiveness of this cosy retreat that the general preferred it to his official quarters on the shore and he occasionally spent a whole afternoon reading, writing or dozing there in undisturbed privacy.