All this work was but skirmishing. The true struggle had still to come. So long as the President dealt only with grand jurors and indictments, he could hardly fail to succeed; but the case was different when he dealt directly with Chief-Justice Marshall and with the stubborn words of the Constitution, that “no person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.” The district-attorney was ready with a mass of evidence, but the chief-justice alone could say whether a syllable of this evidence should be admitted; and hitherto the chief-justice had by no means shown a bias toward the government. Hay was convinced that Marshall meant to protect Burr, and he wrote to the President on the subject:[331]-- “The bias of Judge Marshall is as obvious as if it was stamped upon his forehead. I may do him injustice, but I do not believe that I am, when I say that he is endeavoring to work himself up to a state of f[irmness?] which will enable [him] to aid Burr throughout the trial without appearing to be conscious of doing wrong. He seems to think that his reputation is irretrievably gone, and that he has now nothing to lose by doing as he pleases. His concern for Mr. Burr is wonderful. He told me many years ago, when Burr was rising in the estimation of the Republican party, that he was as profligate in principle as he was desperate in fortune. I remember his words; they astonished me. Yet when the grand jury brought in their bill, the chief-justice gazed at him for a long time, without appearing conscious that he was doing so, with an expression of sympathy and sorrow as strong as the human countenance can exhibit without palpable emotion.” August 3 the court opened its session and the trial began. Not until August 17 was the jury impanelled; and meanwhile a new figure appeared at Burr’s side. Blennerhassett arrived in Richmond August 4, and was brought before the court August 10. He began at once a private journal of the trial, which remained the only record of what passed among the conspirators. As each witness appeared, Blennerhassett told the gossip regarding him. “The once redoubted Eaton,”[332] who was put first upon the stand, “has dwindled down in the eyes of this sarcastic town into a ridiculous mountebank, strutting about the streets under a tremendous hat, with a Turkish sash over colored clothes, when he is not tippling in the taverns, where he offers up with his libations the bitter effusions of his sorrows.” “Old sly-boots” Dayton,[333] he said, was lurking about corners. Wilkinson[334] “exhibited the manner of a sergeant under a court-martial rather than the demeanor of an accusing officer confronted with his culprit. His perplexity and derangement, even upon his direct examination, has placed beyond all doubt ‘his honor as a soldier and his fidelity as a citizen.’”