Fresh from the battle-fields of the Revolution, where he had won honors of which he was ever more tenacious than of those achieved elsewhere, and but recently admitted to the bar after a brief period of study, his marriage to a woman ten years his senior and the mother of two well-grown boys was a source of genuine wonderment to Burr's friends in New York. Young, of fascinating manner and appearance, some means, and good family, he might readily have aspired to an alliance with any one of those families which were a power in the State,--the Livingstons, the Van Rensselaers, or the Clintons. But before he quitted the army, Burr had discovered the charms of the society at the "Hermitage," presided over by Mrs. De Visme and her two daughters, one of whom was the widow of Colonel Prevost. There he met the most distinguished men of his country, through whose influence this family had been spared the inconvenience of moving within the British lines at the outbreak of hostilities. In the library, there, he discovered a treasure-house of French literature, to which he was ever partial, and in the interchange of thought which followed his reading, Aaron Burr and Mrs. Prevost became constantly more imbued with a sense of the beauty and attraction of each other's minds. Through her he gleaned his first reverence for the intellectual power of woman, and to her he owed the happiest days of his life. "The mother of my Theo," he said, speaking of her towards the close of his life, "was the best woman and the finest lady I have ever known." In her finished manner, her fine bearing, and her exquisite mind there was a delicate harmony that soothed and satisfied Burr's artistic soul. His marriage to her in July, 1782, put an end to the rumor that he was paying his addresses to Miss De Visme, to which his frequent visits to the "Hermitage" had given rise. The first year of their married life was spent in Albany, where he was engaged in the practice of law, and where Theodosia was born on the 23d of June, 1783. In the fall of that year her parents removed to the city of New York, where they had leased a house in Maiden Lane, at a rental of two hundred pounds per year, to commence from the time the British troops left New York, which they did on November 23, 1783.