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 FrÉdÉric 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.

At the present day we do a service to the author of Paul and Virginia by treating him without ceremony. The time has come to resuscitate him as he appeared to his contemporaries, with his lined forehead, and his uneasy expression, lest the mawkish Bernardin de Saint-Pierre invented by sentimentalists should make us forget altogether the real man who dared to disagree with the philosophers, and to beard the Academy. One appreciates his work better, knowing that it did not spring from a purely elegiac soul, but from a deliberate and dogged mind which knew what it wanted, and did not play its part of literary pioneer at random.

Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was born at Havre in 1737, of a family in which there was little common sense, but great pretensions. The father believed himself to be of noble origin, and was never tired of discoursing to his children of their illustrious ancestors. He had three sons, and one daughter. One of the sons, who took his ancestral glory quite seriously, unable to bear up against the mortifications which awaited him in the world, went out of his mind. The daughter, refusing with disdain all the offers of marriage she received, repented when it was too late, and ended her days in sadness and obscurity. The mother was good and kind, free from vanity, and richly gifted with imagination. Bernardin was fond of relating a conversation which they had had together when he was quite a child about the growing corn. Mme. de Saint-Pierre had explained to him that if every man took his sheaf of corn there would not be enough on the earth for every one, from which they came to the conclusion "that God multiplied the corn when it was in the barns." Here we have already the scheme of the Études de la Nature and we need not ask from whom Bernardin held his method of reasoning.

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.

Mme. de Bayard was a countess of ruined fortunes, rather too fond of borrowing, but she had been at the court of Louis XIV. and had known La Grande Mademoiselle, which amounts to saying that M. de Saint-Pierre thought it due to his aristocratic dreams to get her to "name" one of his children, as they called it in those days. The honour of being her godson devolved upon the future author, who soon learnt to appreciate his good luck. Mme. de Bayard was a handsome old lady, who had preserved in her changed fortunes manners of exquisite courtesy and the airs of a queen. Reduced to all sorts of shifts, and constrained at such times to forget her pride, no sooner had she obtained the necessary money than she raised her head again, and hastened to prepare a fÊte for those who had obliged her with their purse. Her grace and dignity of manner made them her slaves. They would form a circle round her to listen to her stories of the hero Monsieur le Prince, of Louis XIV., amorous and gay, of the Grande Mademoiselle, grown old, and still weeping over the memory of the ungrateful Lauzun, of the wonders of Versailles, and of the romantic nocturnal revels on the grand canal at Fontainebleau. She told such good stories, had so much wit and cheerful kindliness, that no one ever had the heart to ask for a return of the loans they had made to her.

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 fÊtes, 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,[1] 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.

From his earliest years he showed himself to be of an unequal temper, which his father utterly failed to understand. The child was often lost in the clouds, or absorbed in the contemplation of a blade of grass, a flower, or a fly. One day when M. de Saint-Pierre was calling his attention to the beauties of the spires of the Cathedral of Rouen, he cried out in a sort of ecstacy: "Ah, how high they fly!" He had only noticed the swallows wheeling about in the air. His father looked upon him as an idiot, a strange undisciplined creature, and he was very far from guessing at what was taking place in the mind of his little son. The boy had unearthed from a cabinet an enormous folio containing "all the visions of the hermits of the Desert," taken from the Lives of the Saints. It became his habitual study, and from it he learnt that God comes to the help of all those who call upon Him. There could, therefore, be nothing for him to fear from his masters, his parents, old Marie, or in fact from any one. He could abandon himself in peace to his beautiful dreams, and withdraw himself into the ideal world, where his imagination showed him only tenderness, flowers, and sunshine. In case of need he would call God to his aid, and God would surely deliver him.

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.

But the more Providence showed an interest in him, the more ungovernable he became. The child so gentle, so compassionate to animals, became passionate and violent, whenever the shocks of real life unhinged him, so that he was almost beside himself. His father raged, and then it was that the godmother interfered. She, who understood it all, found her godson interesting, and while she comforted him tenderly, she pacified and reassured his parents. To her he owed his recall from exile after some innocent escapade which had terrified his family. To her he owed some of his masters. To her he owed the book which determined the bent of his mind, and the influence of which one can trace everywhere in his works: Robinson Crusoe.

Mme. de Bayard had made him a present of it, just at a moment when it was thought necessary to change the current of his thoughts. Before he was twelve he had set his heart upon becoming a Capucine monk, ever since the time when Brother Paul had taken him with him for a tour on foot through Normandy. The journey had been a perpetual enchantment, one long junketing. They stopped at the convents, at the country houses, with well-to-do peasants, and there was nothing but feasting and kindliness everywhere. Brother Paul told stories all the way, the weather was fine, the fields were in bloom, and little Bernardin adored nature, whom nobody just then seemed to think much about, with the exception of one other dreamer who had found her "dead in the eyes of men," and who was just then engaged in resuscitating her. But as yet young Saint-Pierre did not even know the name of J. J. Rousseau. He only knew that in the country "the air is pure, the landscape smiling, walking pleasant, and living easy"; that he was very happy, and never wished to do anything else in the future than to watch the growth of the plants, and listen to the woodland sounds. He made up his mind to take the monk's habit and staff in order to be able to spend the rest of his days wandering about the lanes, and this resolution he announced as soon as he reached home. His father laughed at him, his godmother gave him Robinson Crusoe.

This book had a great influence upon his career. It suggested to him the idea of his famous island, where Friday was replaced by a people whom Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, by wise laws and by force of example, had recalled to the "innocence of the golden age." The more he reflected upon it the more the enterprise appeared to him practicable and worthy of a man's powers, so much so that, having served as the sport of his imagination, it became the aim of his existence. After some months, no longer able to curb his impatience, he obtained leave to embark for Martinique in a vessel belonging to one of his uncles. It seemed to him quite impossible that he should not find somewhere on the wide ocean a desert island, of which he would make himself king. Nevertheless, the impossible happened, and he returned to Havre greatly disappointed but not discouraged. While awaiting another opportunity he matured his plans, in which the suppression of all schools held a prominent place. Time only served to strengthen him in his design, and we shall find him giving up the best part of his youth to the search for his island. His long journeys had no other object. Being unable to find it, he wished at least to demonstrate to the world what it might have been, and he laboured indefatigably to describe it. One of the results of this fortunate obstinacy is entitled Paul and Virginia. We can understand that Bernardin always preserved a feeling of the liveliest gratitude towards his godmother and towards Robinson Crusoe.

It was again Mme. de Bayard, who on his return from Martinique interposed to see that he finished his studies. M. de Saint-Pierre did not trouble himself about it, being discouraged by the capricious and senseless method in which his incorrigible son studied. He yielded, however, and sent Bernardin to the Jesuits at Caen, who completed the work begun by the Lives of the Saints and Robinson Crusoe. They made their pupils read the narratives of their missionaries, and those great voyages to foreign countries, the daring adventures, the sublime sufferings, the martyrs and the miracles finally set on fire the imagination of young Bernardin. He worked no more, played no more, talked no more, entirely given up to his determined resolution that he also would become a missionary and go upon these wonderful voyages, and be a martyr too. The Jesuit father in whom he confided, smiled, but did not discourage him. M. de Saint-Pierre hastened to recall him, and old Marie went to meet him outside the town to say, with tears in her eyes, "Then you mean to become a Jesuit?" That was the first blow to his vocation. The grief of his mother, and the lectures of Brother Paul finally put an end to it, and he thought no more of becoming a martyr.

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 employÉ. 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[2] 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.

He no longer thought it essential that it should be an island; any desert would suffice, provided it had a fertile soil and a good climate. He fixed his choice upon the shores of the Sea of Aral, and at once set about his preparations for departure; which consisted in taking his books to the second-hand bookseller, and his clothes to the old-clothes man, and in borrowing right and left a few crowns. He thus scraped together a few sovereigns, and took the diligence to Brussels, whence be counted on reaching Russia and the Sea of Aral. Why Russia? Why the Sea of Aral? He has given his reasons in a pamphlet, in which he goes back to the Scythian migration, to Odin and Cornelius Nepos, and which explains nothing, unless it is that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre became almost a visionary when his hobby was in question. Here are the reasons which he gives for his choice: "If there were some place upon earth, under a bright sky, where one could find at one and the same time, honour, riches, and society, all due to the security of possession, that place would soon be filled with inhabitants. This happy country is to be found on the east coast of the Caspian Sea; but the Tartars who inhabit it have only made of it a desert." That is all. On the other hand, a note at the bottom of the page shows us where the future legislator had sought his models, reserving to himself the liberty to improve upon them. "The English peopled Pennsylvania with no other invitation than this: He who shall here plant a tree shall gather the fruits thereof. That is the whole spirit of the law." This note was the reply to a famous apostrophe in the Discours sur l'inÉgalitÉ of J. J. Rousseau.

"The first man who, having enclosed a territory, ventured to say this is mine, and who found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, miseries and horrors, would he not have spared the human race who should have pulled up the stakes, filled in the ditch, and cried to his fellows, 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth are for all, and that the earth belongs to no man.'"

One might point out other disagreements between the Discours sur l'inÉgalitÉ and the pamphlet upon the colony of the Sea of Aral, but they all bear upon questions of detail. Jean Jacques and Bernardin agree at bottom as to the end to aim at and the path to follow. Young Saint-Pierre was already and for ever a disciple of Rousseau. He steeped himself in his philosophy, in anticipation of the day when he was to come to him for lessons in sentiment. Master and pupil both believed that our ills come from society. Nature arranged everything for our happiness, and man was good; if we are wicked and unhappy the fault is in ourselves, who have provoked the evil by disregarding her laws. One can easily see the consequences of these misanthropical views. As we have been the authors of our own unhappiness and know where we have been mistaken, there is certainly a remedy. It rests with us to overcome most of our sufferings by reforming society, and changing our laws and our morality. Humanity only needs a clear-sighted and courageous guide, who would dare to fling in its face its follies and cruelties—who would bring it back into the right path. Rousseau was this guide in words and on paper; Saint-Pierre wished to become the same in deed and in fact. He purposed to put into practice what his century was dreaming of, and that is why he set out one fine night for a fabulous country. One may maintain that he could have found other and more useful ways of employing his time, but, at least, his way was not commonplace or egotistical.

He travelled as an apostle, solely occupied with his mission, trusting to Providence to bring him with his 150 francs to the feet of Peter III.; for it was from the Emperor of Russia that he meant to ask help and protection to found his ideal republic, by which should be demonstrated the vast inferiority of monarchies. He never doubted but that the Czar would share his zeal, then why disturb himself about the means of accomplishing his design? Had he not in old times travelled with brother Paul without money and without thought for the morrow? Had he come to any harm from it? What people gave to the mendicant friar for the love of God, they would give to him for the love of humanity. And so it turned out. He arrived in Russia after having spent his last crown at the Hague. His journey had been a perpetual miracle. One lent him money, another lodged him, a third introduced him to others because of his good looks. At Amsterdam they even offered him a situation and a wife, which he did not think it right to accept because of his republic. He felt that he owed a duty to his people.

He landed at St. Petersburg with six francs in his pocket, and the miracle continued. He did not dine every day, thank heaven! or the romance would have had no further interest. But on the eve of dying of hunger he always encountered some generous person who, like his godmother, thought him interesting. He must indeed have been charming, this fine young fellow, full of fire and good faith, starting out from his garret to regenerate the world. So much so indeed that, passed on from one to another, from introduction to introduction, he arrived at last in the train of a general at Moscow, where the court then was, received a commission as sub-lieutenant of Engineers, and replaced the clothes sold to the old-clothes man in Paris by a brilliant uniform. When his new friends saw him in his scarlet coat with black facings, his fawn-coloured waistcoat, his white silk stockings, his beautiful plume, and his glittering sword, they foretold a great fortune for him. One of them called him cousin, and offered to present him to the Empress Catherine, whom the Revolution of 1762 had just placed upon the throne. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was transported with joy at this proposal. It was only four months since he had quitted France, and he already neared his goal. Providence evidently watched over his republic.

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."[3] 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.

Meanwhile his master remained inconsolable at having by his own fault failed to accomplish the happiness of mankind. Russia had lost its attraction, he now only saw in it matter for disgust and anger, and he was angry with himself for having come so far simply to contemplate "slaves" and "victims." His profession bored him. He had addressed to the Russian government several memorials upon the military position and means of defence of Finland, whither his duties as officer of Engineers had called him, and his labours had met with no better fortune there than in France; nobody paid any attention to it. Anger grew upon him, then bitterness, and he seized upon the first pretext to send in his resignation, and cross the frontier in order to seek elsewhere a "land of liberty" where the antique virtues still lived. A happy inspiration induced him with this idea to follow the road through Poland where the people were at that time the most oppressed and most miserable in Europe. At sight of Warsaw "he felt in his heart all the virtues of a republican hero."

They did not remain with him long; other and more tender interests were soon to replace them. Warsaw is the scene of the romance of his youth, the adventure that his imagination as time went on turned into a devouring passion, which he ended in believing in himself, and which his biographers have related sometimes with virtuous indignation, accusing him of having lived for more than a year at the expense of a woman, sometimes with the respect due to great sufferings and unmerited misfortunes. Unhappily or happily, some letters of his, published for the first time thirty years ago,[4] show him to have been at once less culpable and less worthy of compassion. These letters are addressed to a friend in Russia, M. Duval, a Genevese merchant established at St. Petersburg. In them Saint-Pierre speaks of his love affairs with the indiscretion of youth and the vanity of a bourgeois anxious to announce to the world that he has made a conquest of a princess. It is amusing to compare this sincere report, confirmed by the Correspondence published in his complete works,[5] with the official story no less sincere, which the hero of the adventure liked to circulate in his old age.

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."

On the 20th of August there is another letter to M. Hennin, in which he shows that he is more and more impatient to leave Poland: "If nothing keeps me here I shall leave in the beginning of the month of September for ... Vienna, for I am tired of so much idleness, of which the least evil is that I am growing accustomed to an indolent life." This is certainly not the language of a man desperately in love, whose heart would be broken if one tore him away from the spot where his divinity breathed. But if we believe the legend, that was, however, the moment in which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre surpassed the passion of Saint-Preux, and lived the life of The Modern HeloÏse, because it was his fate to realise all that Rousseau had been content to write about, as well in his romances as in his plans of social reform. This is briefly what the legend tells us.

Among the persons who had thrown open their doors to him at Warsaw, was a young princess named Marie Miesnik, remarkable for "her love of virtue." We see that this is exactly the starting-point of The Modern HeloÏse, a plebeian falls in love with a patrician. "From the first day," says AimÉ Martin, "M. de Saint-Pierre felt the double ascendancy of her genius and her beauty, and she became at once the sole thought of his life." On her side the Julia of Poland did not remain insensible. We pass over the emotions which filled and lacerated their souls to the day blessed and fatal, when overtaken by a storm in a lonely forest, they repeated the scene of the groves of Clarens, adding thereto recollections of Dido's grotto. "She gave herself up like Julia, and he was delirious with joy like Saint-Preux," continues AimÉ Martin, whose phrase proves how much the resemblance with The Modern HeloÏse was part of the tradition. Long intoxication followed these first raptures. More than a year passed in forgetfulness of the whole world, but Princess Marie's family began, like Julia's, to be irritated with the insolence of this plebeian who dared to make love to a Miesnik, and the end of it was an order to depart, given by the lady to her lover, like Rousseau again, and which was obeyed with the same passionate lamentations.

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."

One is sorry to learn that he had accepted money from his Princess. His excuse, if there were one for that sort of thing, will be found in the letter of The Modern HeloÏse, where Julia persuades her lover, by means of eloquent invective, to receive money for a journey. "So I offend your honour for which I would a thousand times give my life? I offend thine honour, ungrateful one! who hast found me ready to abandon mine to thee. Where is then this honour which I offend, tell me, grovelling heart, soul without delicacy! Ah! how contemptible art thou if thou hast but one honour of which Julia does not know," &c. Saint-Preux had submitted to this torrent. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre imitated his model in this also. See where literary loves lead one.

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:

"Your passion is a fury which I can no longer endure. Return to your senses. Think of your position and your duties. I am just starting, I am going to rejoin my mother in the Palatinate of X. I shall not return until I hear that you are no longer here, and you will receive no letters from me until such time as I can address them to you to France. Marie M—."

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.

Returned to Paris he again overwhelmed the ministers of the king, Louis XV., with memorials which no one wanted, with complaints and petitions. He continued to invent schemes on all sorts of subjects, and to cover scraps of paper with a thousand scattered ideas. M. Hennin, clearly discerning where his talent lay, persuaded him to write his travels, but the time was not yet come, and the fragments of this date which have been preserved to us contain nothing but information upon political, commercial, and agricultural subjects. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre himself felt that it was too soon. Announcing one day to Hennin that he had conceived a new idea about the movement of the earth, he added:

"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." (Letter of the 9th of July, 1767).

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.

He next drew out the plan of his chief town, and employed the small inheritance which came to him from his father, in buying scientific instruments and works upon politics, the navy, and natural history. The expedition was to embark at Lorient. He hastened to rejoin it, and was at first disappointed with its composition, for instead of artisans and agriculturalists, the Commander-in-chief had collected secretaries, valets, cooks, and a small troupe of comedians of both sexes. However, Saint-Pierre took heart at once on learning that the Commander-in-chief had amongst his luggage all the volumes that had yet appeared of the EncyclopÆdia. He was, therefore, in spite of all, "a true philosopher," and things were pretty evenly balanced. The EncyclopÆdia took the place of the artisans, and made the actresses pass muster. Take note that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre always reproached his contemporaries, especially the encyclopÆdists, with being mere visionaries, destitute of practical sense. He flattered himself that he was the practical man in this world of Utopians, but at the same time he looked upon their work as a sort of supernatural book. Such is the power of opinion.

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."[6]

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.[7]

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.

This rage for taking notes seems a simple thing to us now; it is the method of to-day, but it was unique and unheard of in 1769. No one, in France at least, had bethought himself of these descriptions, for which one must have materials. Moreover, no one was then in a position to note the details of a landscape, for the simple reason that no one was capable of seeing them, not even Rousseau. Not that he had not the same keen perception for nature that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had, but it struck him in a somewhat different way, as we shall see later. Besides, the Confessions and the Reveries did not appear till after his death, and could not have had any influence whatever on the birth at the Isle of France in 1769 of picturesque literature.

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.

It concerns us little what Bernardin de Saint-Pierre did at the Isle of France, outside his dreamings, or whether he was right or wrong in his quarrels, his disagreements, and his lamentations. It suffices for us that he returned to Paris in the month of June, 1771, his portfolio full of scraps of paper, his trunks full of shells, plants, insects and birds, and what was of more value, his head full of pictures. He was as poor as when he set out, and still more unsociable, but he was ripe for his task. "He had seen, he had felt, he had suffered, he had heaped up emotions and colours, he had made himself different from other men. To the vulgar crowd he had been an adventurer, but he had passed through the school which develops painters, poets, and men of talent. That is what he had gained by his long travels."[8] It is a great advantage when one is oneself an exceptional being, to have had a youth which was not like that of everybody else. An ordinary man would have run a great chance of coming out diminished in energy, and on the wrong road, from those dangerous years of apprenticeship which led the author of Paul and Virginia to be himself. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre came through them without too many mishaps. His travels only made him a little more original, and more misanthropic than he was in the beginning.

[1] AimÉ Martin, author of the great biography entitled Memoirs of the Life and Works of J. H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. [1 vol. 8vo. 1820.]