Although Hamilton had commanded his brain to dwell exclusively upon the vindication and its means, the deeps below were bitter and hot.  When the work was over, and exhausted in body and mind he went about his duties mechanically, or attempted to find distraction in his family, he felt as if the abundant humanity in him were curdled; and he longed for a war, that he might go out and kill somebody.  It was small compensation that the Virginian ring were grinding their teeth, and shivering under daily shafts of humiliation and ridicule.  So terrible was the position in which they had placed him, so immeasurably had they added to the sum of his contempt for human kind, that individually they occupied, for a time, but a corner of his thought.

His only solace during this trial had been Washington; he had been too busy and too frozen for Mrs. Croix.  But that closest of his friends, although forced by his high office to a position of stern neutrality, did all he could in private to convince Hamilton of his unaltered affection and regard.  As soon as the vindication was complete he fell into the habit of finishing his daily walk with an hour in Hamilton’s library.  But if his visits were a pleasure to his Secretary, they were wretchedness unleavened for two other members of the family.  The President never failed to ask for Angelica and George Washington Lafayette; and upon their prompt but unwilling advent he would solemnly place one on either knee, where they remained for perhaps half an hour in awe-stricken misery.  They had orders to show no distress, and they behaved admirably; but although young Lafayette was rapidly learning English, the fact did not lessen his fear of this enormous man, who spoke so kindly, and looked as if he could have silenced the Terror with the awful majesty of his presence.  Angelica, being an independent little American, was less overwhelmed, but she was often on the verge of hysterics.  It was the short session of Congress, and in March, George, with scalding but dignified tears, accompanied his godfather to Mount Vernon, whence he wrote Hamilton a daily letter of lament, until habit tempered his awe; from that point he passed with Gallic bounds into an ardent affection for the great man, who, if of an unearthly dignity, was always kind, and, when relieved of the cares of State, uniformly genial.

The respite in Philadelphia was brief.  In April came the first news of the beheading of the French king; and the same tardy packets brought word that France was at war with England and Spain.  Hamilton sent the news, express haste, to Washington, and dismissed every consideration from his brain but the terrible crisis forced upon the United States, and the proper measures to save her from shipwreck.  In the early stages of the French Revolution he had predicted the developments with such accuracy to Henry Walter Livingston that the new Secretary of Legation, upon his arrival in Paris, told Gouverneur Morris—­United