“Take them,” says Aaron to his Bucktails. “They are yours, not his--those offices. He but gives you your own.” Aaron, throughout those four years of Adams, tends the Jackson fires like a devotee. Van Ness is astonished at his enthusiasm. “I should think you’d rest,” says he. “Rest? I cannot rest. It is all I live for now.” “But I don’t understand! You get nothing.” The black eyes shoot forth the old ophidian sparks. “Sir, I get vengeance--and forget feelings!” [Illustration: 0377] Adams comes to his White House end, and Jackson is elected in his place. Jackson comes to New York, and he and Aaron meet in the latter’s rooms--pleasant rooms, overlooking the Bowling Green. They light their long pipes, and sit opposite one another, smoking like dragons. Jackson is the one who speaks. Taking the pipe from his lips, he says: “Colonel Burr, my gratitude is not wholly declamatory.” “General,” returns Aaron, “the best favor you can show me is show favor to my friends.” “That I shall do, be sure! Van Ness is to become a judge, Swartwout collector, while Van Buren goes into my Cabinet as Secretary of State. Also I shall say to your enemies--the Clintons and those other proud ones--that he from New York who seeks Andrew Jackson’s appointment, must come with the approval of Colonel Burr.” Jackson is inaugurated. “I am through,” says Aaron--“through at four and seventy. Now I shall work a little, play a little, rest a deal; but no more politics--no more politics! My friends are triumphant. As for my foes, I leave them to Providence and Andrew Jackson.” CHAPTER XXV--THE SERENE LAST DAYS AARON goes forward with his business--his cases in court, his conferences with clients. Accurate as an Alvan-ley in dress, slim, light, with the quick step of a boy, no one might guess his years. The bar respects him; his friends crowd about him; his enemies shrink away from the black, unblinking stare of those changeless ophidian eyes. And so with his books and his wine and his pipe he sits through the serene evenings in his rooms by the Bowling Green. He is a lion, and strangers from England and Germany and France ask to be presented. They talk--not always wisely or with taste. “Was Hamilton a gentleman?” asks a popinjay Frenchman. Aaron’s black eyes blaze: “Sir,” says he, “I met him!” “Colonel Burr,” observes a dull, thick Englishman, who imagines himself a student of governments--“Colonel Burr, I have read your Constitution. I find it not always clear. Who is to expound it?” Aaron leads our student of governments to the window, and points, with a whimsical smile, at the Broadway throngs that march below. “Sir,” he remarks, “they are the expounders of our Constitution.” Aaron, at seventy-eight, does a foolish thing; he marries--marries the wealthy Madam Jumel.