George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

‘ [262] hated the man who had murdered Hamilton.’ ‘Assassine’ was the word he used. This may have been his sole motive, though he had little influence, I suppose, at that time, and it is not very likely. But, at any rate, he suffered Burr to fall into poverty in Paris and come home a beggar, arriving at Boston, where he was relieved, but not visited, by Mr. Jonathan Mason.

The conversation now became very various and interesting, and was continued until near dinner-time. Among other things, Mad. de Duras gave an account of her own escape and her mother's from Bordeaux for the United States, amidst the terrors of the Revolution; and finding that I was acquainted with Captain Forbes, who had materially assisted them to get on board an American vessel in the night, she charged me with many messages for him, and subsequently added a note of acknowledgment, which I delivered to its address personally the following summer on Milton Hill. Captain Forbes told me that he had already received other acknowledgments from her and her mother; her father, General Kersaint, having perished by the guillotine in the days of Terror.

But, at last, it was time to go, and we went, the Prince first and I afterwards, not thinking to see him again. However, I did see him several times, but only once when the conversation was especially interesting, and this was again in the library of Mad. de Duras, the last time I saw her, and just as I was leaving Paris for London. It was at the moment when there had been for several days a ‘crise,’ as it was called, or a sort of suspension of efficiency in the government, from the resignation of the Duc de Richelieu, and the difficulty of arranging a new Ministry. I had not been in the room five minutes before I perceived that, like all the rest of the world, Prince Talleyrand and Mad. de Duras were talking about the anxieties of the time, and that the Viscount de Senonnes was there, listening. I joined Mons. de Senonnes, whom I knew very well, and we both said as nearly nothing as possible. Indeed, there was nothing for anybody else to say. The Prince had all the talk, or all but the whole of it, to himself, and he was much in earnest in what he said; willing, too, I suppose, that it should be heard and his opinions known. His view of things seemed the most sombre. Everything was threatening. No sufficient Ministry could be formed. The king had nobody to depend upon. In short, everything was as dark as possible. Mad. de Duras said very little. She was, as everybody knew, an important personage in the management of affairs at the Palace, and was now evidently made unhappy by the view the Prince gave of the immediate future,