“Is this what we came here to discuss?” asked a voice, dropped to the register of profound contempt.  They turned about with a laugh and faced Madison’s ascetic countenance, pale with disgust.  “We have the most important work to do for which men ever met together, and we stand at the window and talk scandal about a silly woman and her hair.”

“You did not, my dear James,” said Morris, lightly; “and thereby you have missed the truly divine stimulus for the day’s work.  Don’t you realize, my friend, that no matter how hard a man may labour, some woman is always in the background of his mind?  She is the one reward of virtue.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” replied Madison, contemptuously.  “I can flatter myself that I at least am independent of what appears to men like you to be the only motive for living.”

“Right, my boy, but great as you are, you don’t know what you might have been.”

The door opened, and Hamilton entered the room, his hands full of papers, his face as gay and eager as if he were about to read to his audience a poem or a lively tale.  Perhaps one secret of his ascendency over those who knew him best was that he never appeared to take himself seriously, even when his whole being radiated power and imperious determination.  When he descended to the depths of seriousness and his individuality was most overwhelming, his unsleeping sense of humour saved him from a hint of the demagogue.

“While my wife was finishing, I heard you gossiping from the window above,” he said, “but I had by far the best view.  The lilac bushes—­”

“Do you know her?” asked Morris, eagerly.

“Alas, I do not.  It is incalculable months since I have had time to look so long at a woman.  What is the matter, Madison?”

“I am nauseated.  I had thought that you—­”

Here even General Schuyler laughed, and Hamilton hurriedly arranged his papers.

He sat down when he began to talk, but was quickly on his feet and shaking his papers over the table.  To him, also, the council table was the most familiar article of furniture in his world, but he was usually addressing those it stood for, and he was too ardent a speaker, even when without the incentive of debate, to keep to his chair.

“I know what you are wondering,” he said.  “No, it is not the British Constitution.  What I have done so distempered as to impress people with the belief that I am blind to the spirit of this country, I am at a loss to conjecture.  The British Constitution is the best form which the world has yet produced; in the words of Necker, it is the only government ‘which unites public strength with individual security,’ Nevertheless, no one is more fully convinced than I that none but a republican government can be attempted in this country, or would be adapted to our situation.  Therefore, I propose to look to the British Constitution for nothing but those elements of stability and permanency which a