Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but gradually rising to a prominent position in politics—­“the great little Madison,” as Burr rather lightly called him.  Before very long he had proposed marriage to the young widow.  She hesitated, and some one referred the matter to President Washington.  The Father of his Country answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the subject of matrimony.  It is worth preserving because it shows that he had a sense of humor: 

For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage ...  A woman very rarely asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her mind is wholly made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation of obtaining a sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your disapproval.

Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish ways was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her old association with Burr.  At once the story sprang to light that Burr had been her lover and that he had brought about the match with Madison as an easy way of getting rid of her.

There is another curious story which makes Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, to have been the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr.  There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was kept by Van Buren’s putative father, and that Van Buren in later life showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was called by his opponents “the fox of Kinderhook.”  But, as Van Buren was born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember, as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only before their marriage, but afterward until her death.

Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster, found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during his later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect.  His love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case of his second marriage.

Many other stories are told of him.  For instance, it is said that he once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia.  The only other occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated Aaron Burr.  Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his mistress.

It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort.  This may be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when otherwise he might never have thought of them.