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It is interesting after this explosion of French feeling to call to mind Carlyle's remarks about "Paul and Virginia" in the second book of his prose poem, "The French Revolution."

"Still more significant are two books produced on the eve of the ever-memorable explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the world,--Saint-Pierre's 'Paul et Virginie' and Louvet's 'Chevalier de Faublas,'--noteworthy books, which may be considered as the last speech of old Feudal France. In the first there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world. Everywhere wholesome Nature is in unequal conflict with diseased perfidious Art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest island of the sea. Ruin and Death must strike down the loved one, and what is most significant of all, death even here not by necessity, but by etiquette. What a world of prurient corruption lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty! Yet on the whole our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical, though most morbid. We will call his book the swan-song of old dying France."

So far Carlyle, who was a sentimentalist at heart.

It is noticeable, however, that M. Barine, whose biography of Saint-Pierre is here introduced to the English reader, and who, I have no doubt, represents modern criticism, lays no stress upon the death of Virginia, observing, with much composure, "The shipwreck of the 'Saint Geran' and the death of Virginia, which made us all shed floods of tears when we were children, are, it must be allowed, somewhat melodramatic, and, from a literary point of view, very inferior to the passionate scenes" . It is as a love-story glowing and fervent, full of the unrestfulness and tumult which are the harbingers of passion in virgin breasts, that "Paul et Virginie" must now be regarded. So M. Barine says, and he is undoubtedly right; and the English reader, however much his moral sense rejects the climax of the tale, must be dull of heart who does not recognize, even though he fail to admire, the power which depicts the woful plight of poor Virginia when she becomes Love's thrall.

The pages of "Paul et Virginie" are frequently enlivened by aphorism and ennobled by description. One of its sayings is quoted with great effect by Sainte-Beuve in his "Causerie" on Cowper: "Il y a de plus dans la femme une gaiet? l?g?re qui dissipe la tristesse de l'homme." In the same way there is a certain quality in the writings of Saint-Pierre, perceptible even to the foreigner, which renders acquiescence in the judgment of France upon his fame as a writer easier than might have been expected.

A. B.

BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE.

YOUTH--YEARS OF TRAVEL.

In looking over the collection of the portraits of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, we are witnesses of a strange transformation. That of Lafitte, engraved in 1805, during the lifetime of the original, represents a fine old man with a long face, strongly marked features, and locks of white hair falling to his shoulders. His expression has more penetration than sweetness, and certain vertical lines between the brows reveal an unaccommodating temper. This is certainly no ordinary man; but we are not surprised that he had many enemies.

In 1818, four years after the death of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a less realistic work begins to idealize his features for posterity. An engraving by Fr?d?ric Lignon from a drawing by Girodet represents him as younger, and in an attitude of inspiration. There is an almost heavenly look upon his innocent face, surrounded by an abundant crop of hair artistically curled and falling to his shoulders. Everything in this second portrait is rounded off and toned down, and this is only the beginning of things. The type created by Girodet became more angelic and more devoid of significance at each new reproduction. The eyes get larger, the features are less marked, and we have a hero of Romance, a dreamy, sentimental youth, the apocryphal Bernardin de Saint-Pierre which a vignette of the time of the Restoration shows us, seated at a cottage door, his eyes cast up to heaven, his handkerchief in his hand, while his dog fixes his eyes tenderly upon him, and a negress contemplates him with rapture. Legend has decidedly got the better of history. An insipid and rather ridiculous silhouette has insinuated itself in the place of a countenance full of originality and energy.

In spite of the touch of folly which spoilt some members of the family, it was an ideal home for the children's happiness. The life there was simple, and humble friends were by no means despised. A servant of the old-fashioned kind, an old woman called Marie, had her place in it, gave her advice and spoilt the children. A Capucine monk, Brother Paul, would bring sugar-plums and delight the whole household with his stories, which bore no trace of morose religious views. Their studies were a little desultory, their recreations delightfully homely. They gardened, played games in the granary, paddled about on the sea-shore, and fought with the street boys, for all the world as though they had no belief in their noble ancestors. Occasionally they got old Marie to do up their hair in numberless starched curl-papers, which stiffened it and filled the good woman with admiration; they would then put on their best clothes and go to visit Bernardin's godmother, Mme. de Bayard. Those were happy days.

She brought into play the same fascinations to win the heart of the first comer, were it only a child, so that she appeared to her godson as a being quite apart, dazzling and adorable. He was not ignorant of the straits she was put to, and it had even happened to him, seeing her in tears, to slip his only silver-piece under her cushion; but none the less for that did she seem to soar above him in a superior world. Under her faded finery she was to him the personification of supreme elegance, and he was right. She talked as no one else in Havre knew how to talk, and in listening to her he was borne away to a new world peopled with great princes and beautiful princesses who welcomed Mme. de Bayard with distinction. He himself became a great noble and showered riches upon his beloved godmother. He would have been a poor creature not to prefer these beautiful dreams to gifts of any kind, and besides, the old Countess made presents just as she gave her f?tes, at the most unexpected moments. M. de Saint-Pierre respected her, and she had a great influence, and it was always a beneficent one upon little Bernardin's early education.

He was not an easy child to manage. Some one who knew Bernardin de Saint-Pierre very well, and who loved and admired him greatly, said that he united in himself all the good and all the bad qualities of his brothers and his sister who were themselves neither ordinary nor accommodating, with the exception, perhaps, of the youngest of the boys. They were a nervous race, full of ambition, prompt to illusion, and bitterly resenting deception and injustice. "A single thorn," said Bernardin, "gives me more pain than the odour of a hundred roses gives me pleasure." He did not exaggerate, nature had exquisitely adapted him for suffering.

He did in fact call upon Him, and God came, as He always comes to those who cry to Him in faith. One day, when his mother had punished him unjustly, he prayed to heaven to open the door of his prison, and to make known his innocence. The door remained closed, but a ray of sunlight suddenly pierced the gloom and lighted up the window. The little prisoner fell upon his knees, and burst into tears in a transport of joy. The miracle was accomplished. It is with a ray of sunshine that God has ever opened the prisons of His children.

He had suffered an irreparable loss during his sojourn at Caen. Mme. de Bayard was dead; there was no longer any one to pour peace into that restless and sombre nature. It became more and more true that "all his sensations developed at once into passions," and more than ever he sought a refuge from reality in dreams which his age made dangerous. Eager for solitude, isolated in the midst of his companions, he became absorbed in his visionary projects, and expended upon the phantoms of his imagination the vague emotions that oppressed him.

He sustained another loss equally calamitous to him though for very different reasons. His mother died while he was finishing his studies at Rouen, and with her disappeared the peaceful joys and sunshine of the home, and her son was astonished to discover that at the first vacation he had no longer any wish to return there.

The thought was new and painful. The following year he went to Paris, with the intention of becoming an engineer, and when he had been there a year, he heard that his father had married again and was no longer to be counted upon to help his sons. One of them was a sailor, the other a soldier. Bernardin found himself alone in the streets of Paris, without money, and almost without friends. His real education was about to commence. He was twenty-three, good-looking, very impressionable, with a delicate, keen imagination, courage, and unstable character.

Almost all his biographers have deplored the use he made of his time up to the age of thirty and after. It is true that in the eyes of prudent people, who approve of a regulated career with promotion at stated intervals, his entrance into the world must appear absurd, even reprehensible. No one could make a worse bungle of his future than he did, his excuse is that it was not intentional. On the contrary, he took great pains to seek appointments, and believed himself to be a model employ?. But instinct, stronger than reason, constantly drove him from a line which was not his own. He has very happily expressed in one of his works the combat which takes place under such circumstances in a highly-endowed mind.

He has just said that among animals, it is upon the innate and permanent instinct of each species that depend their character, their manners and, perhaps, even their expression. "The instincts of animals, which are so varied," he continues, "seem to be distributed in each one of us in the form of secret inward impulses which influence all our lives. Our whole life consists in nothing else but their development, and it is these impulses, when our reason is in conflict with them, which inspire us with immovable constancy, and deliver us up among our fellows to perpetual conflicts with others and with ourselves." Bernardin de Saint-Pierre knew of these struggles with instinct by his own experience. Thanks to them he was so fortunate as to succeed in nothing for twelve years, and to be in the end obliged to abandon himself in despair to those "secret inward impulses," which predestined him to take up the pen. But prudent people have never forgiven him for his inability to settle down, and they have suggested that his conduct was detestable.

He entered the army with the greatest ease, owing, as it happened, to a misunderstanding. They were just in the middle of the Seven Years' War, and a great personage to whom Bernardin had applied mistook him for somebody else and without any further investigation gave him a commission in the Engineers. He went through the campaign of 1760, fell out with his superior officers, and was dismissed. On his return to France, having been to see his father, his stepmother made him feel that he was not wanted, and he returned to Paris as destitute and lonely as it is possible to be. Youth takes these things to heart, and by reason of them bears a grudge against the world and life.

The following year he succeeded in being sent to Malta, quarrelled with his superiors and with his comrades, and was shelved. From his return from Malta we may date the first of the innumerable memorials he wrote upon all subjects--administrative, political, commercial, military, moral, scientific, educational, philanthropic, and utopian--with which he never ceased from that time to overwhelm the ministers and their offices, his friends and protectors; in fact, the whole universe, and which made many people look upon him as a plague. One cannot with impunity undertake to be a reformer and to make the happiness of the human race Bernardin was eager to point out to men in office the mistakes and faults in their administration, and to suggest innovations in the interests of the public good, and he was unaffectedly astonished at their ingratitude. He claimed recompense for his good advice, and received no answer; he insisted, got angry, and ended by exasperating the most kindly disposed, even his old friend Hennin, Chief Clerk in the Foreign Office, who was obliged to write to him one day: "You deceive yourself sir, the King owes you nothing, because you have not acted by his orders. Your memorials, however useful they may be, do not in the least entitle you to ask favours from the King as a matter of right." Such lessons, only too well deserved, irritated the simple-minded petitioner, who had struck out the forgiveness of injuries from amongst the duties of philanthropy. "I have always needed the courage," he said, "to forgive an insult, do what I will the scar remains, unless the occasion arises for returning good for evil; for any one under an obligation to me is as sacred in my sight as a benefactor." In the midst of his self-torment he began again, and his affairs went from bad to worse.

Meanwhile he had to live. In the ministry they gave him no hope whatever of being restored to his rank. He had written to all his relations to ask for help, and had received nothing but refusals. He had given lessons in mathematics and lost his pupils. The baker refused to give him credit any longer, and his landlady threatened to turn him out of doors. There was no other resource left to him but to found his kingdom, which, upon reflection, he had converted into a republic. It was to this that he devoted himself without further delay.

What remained for him to do appeared mere child's play after what he had accomplished. His pamphlet upon his projected colony was ready--it was the same from which we have quoted some fragments above--and it was not too ill-conceived. In it the author spoke little of the happiness of peoples, and much of the utility to Russia of securing a route to the Indies. The settlement which he proposed to found on the Sea of Aral lost under his pen its doubtful character as a philosophical and humanitarian enterprise, to take on the innocent aspect of a military colony intended to keep the Tartars in check, and to serve as an emporium for merchandise from India. In fact he thought he ought to support it with a speech, which he composed, his Plutarch in his hand, and in which he celebrated "the happiness of kings who establish republics." But this speech had no unpleasant consequences as we shall see presently.

On the day appointed for the audience he put his pamphlet in his pocket, glanced over his speech, and followed his guide to the palace. They entered a magnificent gallery, full of great nobles glittering with gold and precious stones, who inspired our young enthusiast on the spot with keen repugnance. There they were those vile slaves of monarchy, whose lying tongues knew no other language than that of flattery! What would be their surprise, what their attitude, on hearing a free man speak boldly of freedom to their sovereign? All at once the door was thrown open with a loud noise, the Empress appeared, every one was silent and remained motionless. The grand master of the ceremonies presented M. de Saint-Pierre, who kissed her hand, and forgot his pamphlet, his speech imitated from Plutarch, his republic, all mankind, and only remembered how to reply gallantly to the great lady who deigned to smile upon his youth and his beautiful blue eyes.

And thus was buried for ever the project of a colony by the Sea of Aral. The author took it the next morning to the favourite of the day, Prince Orloff, and explained its advantages to him without being able to inspire him with the least interest. The Prince indeed seemed relieved when they came to tell him that the Empress was asking for him. "He waited upon her at once in his slippers and dressing-gown, and left M. de Saint-Pierre profoundly distressed and in a mood to write a satire against favourites." He returned, intensely discomfited, to his room at the inn, and took up the education of his manservant while awaiting another opportunity of founding his ideal republic. His servant was a poor devil of a moujik, who had been kidnapped from his family and made a soldier, and who would sing, with tears in his eyes, sweet and melancholy folk songs. He would put his master's shoes into a bucket of water to clean them, only taking them out when they were wanted. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, having taught him how to brush a coat, he was ready to throw himself at his feet and adore him as a superior being.

He arrived at Warsaw on the 17th of June, 1764, and was at once received into the houses of several of the nobility. Some weeks passed in festivities, which gave him more just views upon the subject of Polish austerity, and the antique virtues of the country, and he very soon wished to leave. On the 28th of July he wrote to his friend Hennin: "You think my position here agreeable, so it appears from afar, but if you only knew how empty is the world in which I wander; if you knew how much these dances and grand repasts stupefy without amusing me!" He then begs M. Hennin to use his interest for him at Versailles, and to obtain for him a mission to Turkey, "the finest country in the world as he has been told."

That is what time and a little good-will made of the adventure of Warsaw. Now for history.

We have seen just now that nothing bound Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to Warsaw on the 20th of August, 1764. Fifteen days after, the 5th of September, he writes to M. Duval at St. Petersburg: "I must tell you, my dear friend, for I hide nothing from you, that I have formed an attachment here which almost deserves to be called a passion. It has had a good effect in that it has cured me of my humours. Love is therefore a good remedy to recommend to you above all, love gratified. I have had such a pleasant experience of it, that I impart it to you as an infallible secret, which will be as useful to you as to me. My hypochondria is almost cured.

"I might flatter my self-love by naming to you the object of my passion, but you know I have more delicacy than vanity. I have then found all that could attach me, graces without number, wit enough, and reciprocal affection.

"Another time you shall know more, but be persuaded that with me love does no wrong to friendship."

We are a long way from the genius, the intoxicating beauty, the unheard-of delights. A young man, full of worries, finds distraction and amuses himself with a lovely young lady who has "enough wit," and who is not unkind to him. He is really in love with her, but in a quite reasonable manner, for he writes the same day to Hennin, then at Vienna, that the approach of the bad weather obliges him to make up his mind, and that he will delay no longer in leaving Warsaw. In fact, on the 26th of September he announces his departure to Duval in a letter of which I give the essential passages:

"My very worthy friend, the offers which you make me, the interest which you take in me, your tender attentions, are in my heart subjects of everlasting attachment. I do not know what Heaven has in store for me, but it has never before poured so much joy into my soul. It was something to have given me a friend, love has left me nothing further to desire; it is into your bosom that I pour out my happiness.

"I will not give you the name of the person who after you holds the first place in my heart. Her rank is high above mine, her beauty not extraordinary, but her graces and her wit merit all the homage which I was not able to deny to them. I have received help from her which prevents me from actually accepting your offers. It was pressed upon me so tenderly, that I could not help giving it the preference. I beg you to forgive me for it. I have accepted from her about the value of the sum you offered me....

... "I am spending part of the night in writing to you. I start to-morrow, and my trunks are not yet ready."

He left Warsaw on the 27th of September, after remaining there three months and some days. Three months in which to meet, to love, to part, was really the least one could allow. Certainly there was an epilogue, but how transitory!

He had gone to rejoin M. Hennin at Vienna, where he received a letter from the Princess M., who had thought proper to depict for him the sufferings of absence. With his ordinary ingenuousness he took her at her word, got into a carriage, returned to Warsaw unannounced, arrived in the midst of a reception, was received with fiery glances and insulting words, would take no denial, and after the departure of the guests, wrested his pardon then and there. The next day when he awoke, they gave him the following note:

She had in fact departed. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre felt outraged, and never saw her again.

He returned to his vagrant excursions through Dresden, Berlin, and Paris, to Havre, where he found only his old nurse. His father was dead, his sister in a convent, his brothers far away. "Ah! sir," said the good woman, upsetting her spinning-wheel in her emotion, "the times are indeed changed. There is no one here to receive you but me!" She invited him to dine in her bare lodging, beside her bed of straw, and served up an omelet and a pitcher of cider. Then she opened her trunk, and took out a chipped glass, which she placed gently beside her guest, saying, "It was your mother's." They wept together, and then they talked over the news of the country, of Brother Paul, who was dead, of those who had left the town, of those who had made their fortunes. They spoke also of Russia, of what they drank there, and of the price they paid for bread. Above all things they talked of the happy times when old Marie used to do up the children's hair in starched curl-papers, admired their nonsense, and with her own money bought the class books lost by Bernardin, so as to save him from a scolding. They wept together again, kissed each other, and the young adventurer set out once more, less discontented with humanity than usual. He was also less satisfied with himself, after the lesson of resignation which he had received from this poor old woman, who lived upon three pence a day, and praised God for taking care of her.

"You can see by that, that I grapple with everything, and that I leave floating here and there threads, like the spider, until I can weave my web....

"Give me time to lick my cub. Time, which ripens my intellect, will make the fruits thereof more worthy of you." .

He had a sort of instinct that all those Northern scenes which he had passed through were of no use to him. He tried to find employment in the countries of the sun--in the East or West Indies--without knowing himself why there more than anywhere else. It was the exotic that sought him, and it came to him in a most unexpected manner in the autumn of 1767.

It is hardly necessary to say that whoever knew him knew his project of an ideal republic. To whom had he not mentioned it? He had never ceased to believe in it--to be sure that people would come to it, one day or another; but his ill-luck at Moscow had made his belief less confident and less active. He resigned himself to await until Humanity should call upon him to help it. Great then was his joy when one of his patrons announced to him in confidence one fine day that the French government, converted to his ideas, was going to send him to Madagascar, under the command of a certain person from the Isle of France, to found the colony of his dreams, and to attach the island to France by "the power of wisdom" and "the example of happiness." There was certainly some surprise mixed with his delight, but not sufficient to make him ask himself whether his protector wished merely to get rid of him, or for what reason an expedition entrusted solely to himself had for leader a planter from the Isle of France. He only thought of his preparations for his great enterprise.

His first care was to re-read Plato and Plutarch, and to determine the legislation of his colony. He remained faithful to his first idea of a state entirely free, under the control completely absolute, arbitrary, and irresponsible, of M. de Saint-Pierre. Some one, of course, would have to compel the people to be "subject only to virtue." That was the system put in force later by the Jacobins.

The expedition set sail under the most promising auspices, but once on the open sea, the Commander wished to bring Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to a more reasonable view of the situation, and explained to him that he had never had any other design than to sell his subjects. I leave to the imagination the effects of this thunderclap. They were taking him to join them in the slave trade of the people of Madagascar! The horror of such a thought increasing the shame of having been duped, voyage, companions, projects for the future, and the very name of Madagascar, all became odious to him on the spot. His ship touched at the Isle of France. He hastened to disembark, took a situation as engineer, and left his Commander to go on alone to Madagascar, where, it may be remarked by the way, the expedition perished of fever. For himself, discouraged and justly embittered, he lived in a lonely little cottage from which he could see nothing but the sea, arid plains, and forests. Seated in front of his one window, he spent long hours in letting his gaze wander aimlessly. Or, perhaps, a melancholy pedestrian, he wandered about on the shore, in the mountains, in the depths of those tropical forests which we picture to ourselves as so beautiful, and which he found so sad, because nothing there recalled to him the pleasant scenes of his own country, and because he saw the Isle of France under such gloomy auspices.

"There is not a flower," he wrote, "in the meadows, which, moreover, are strewn with stones, and full of an herb as tough as hemp; no flowering plant with a pleasant scent. Among all the shrubs not one worth our hawthorn. The wild vines have none of the charms of honeysuckle or ground ivy. There are no violets in the woods, and as to the trees, they are great trunks, grey and bare, with a small tuft of leaves of a dull green. These wild regions have never rejoiced in the songs of birds or the loves of any peaceable animal. Sometimes one's ear is offended by the shrieks of the parroquet, or the strident cries of the mischievous monkey."

His melancholy lasted throughout his stay and was good for him: "One enjoys agreeable things," he said afterwards, "and the sad ones make one reflect." That was the lesson which the Isle of France had given to him. He had been there much thrown back upon himself, and he had gained at last a glimpse of the right road. Instead of continuing to cram his notes of travel with technical details, good at most to adorn his memorials to the ministers, he had set himself to note down what he observed from his window, or during his walks. He made a note of the lines and forms of the landscape, of its general appearance, the formation of the ground, the structure of the rocks, the outlines of the trees and plants. He observed their colours, their most subtle shades, their variations according to the weather or time of day, their smallest details, such as the red fissure on a grey stone, or the white underside of a green leaf. He notes the sounds of his solitude, the particular sound of the wind on a certain day in a certain place, the murmur belonging to each kind of tree, the rhythm of a flight of birds, the imperceptible rustling of a leaf moved by an insect. He noted the movements of inanimate nature, the waving of the grass, the parts of a circle described by the force of the wind in the tree tops, the swaying of a leaf upon which a bird had perched itself, the flowing of the streams, the tossing of the sea, the pace of the clouds.

Sometimes he drew, and his sketches were only another form of notes. During the crossing, while full of acute sorrow, he had drawn numberless clouds. He studied their forms, their colour, their foreground and background, their combinations, by themselves or with the sea, the play of light upon them, with the attention and conscientiousness of a painter of to-day, exacting in the matter of truth.

It was a birth as yet obscure and seemingly uncertain. This young engineer, who sketched sunsets instead of making plans, did not know very well what he would do with his "observations." He felt that they would not be wasted, and that they were not like other stories of travel; but the definite initiation into his own sphere was still wanting.

FOOTNOTES:

Aim? Martin.

Three vols. in 8vo., edited by Aim? Martin, Paris, 1826, Ladvocat.

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