Colonel Troup is in high excitement. No such honor has been tendered one of Aaron’s youth within his memory. Wholly the courtier, he looks to see the honored one eagerly forward to go to General Schuyler--that Jove who not alone controls the local thunderbolts but the local laurels. He is shocked to his courtierlike core, when Aaron maintains his cold reserve. “Pardon me, sir!” says Aaron. “Say to General Schuyler that his request is impossible. I never call on gentlemen at their suggestion and on their affairs. When I have cause of my own to go to General Schuyler, I shall go. Until then, if there be reason for our meeting, he must come to me.” “You forget General Schuyler’s age!” returns son-in-law Hamilton. There is a ring of threat in the tones. “Sir,” responds Aaron stiffly, “I forget nothing. There is an age cant which I shall not tolerate. I desire to be understood as saying, and you may repeat my words to whomsoever possesses an interest, that I shall not in my own conduct consent to a social doctrine which would invest folk, because they have lived sixty years, with a franchise to patronize or, if they choose, insult gentlemen whose years, we will suppose, are fewer than thirty.” “I am sorry you take this view,” returns son-in-law Hamilton, copying Aaron’s stiffness. “You will not, I fear, find many to support you in it.” “I am not looking for support, sir,” observes Aaron, pointing the remark with one of those black ophidian stares. “I do you also the courtesy to assume that you intend no criticism of myself by your remark.” There is an inflection as though a question is put. Son-in-law Hamilton so far submits to the inflection as to explain. He intends only to say that General Schuyler’s place in the community is of such high and honorable sort as to make his request to call upon him a mark of favor. As to criticism: Why, then, he criticised no gentleman. There is much profound bowing, and the meeting ends; Colonel Troup, a trifle aghast, retiring with son-in-law Hamilton, whose arm he takes. “There could be no agreement with that young man,” mutters Aaron, looking after the retreating Hamilton, “save on a basis of submission to his leadership. I’ll be chief or nothing.” Aaron settles himself industriously to the practice of law. In the courts, as in everything else, he is merciless. Lucid, indefatigable, convincing, he asks no quarter, gives none. His business expands; clients crowd about him; prosperity descends in a shower of gold.