"PAUL AND VIRGINIA."
Before the appearance of the _Études de la Nature_, Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre was a poor devil, in want, and little known outside one or
two salons, where he was not liked, and with reason. He quite counted
upon his work not passing unnoticed. "I dare say that I shall astonish
you," he wrote to Hennin, before going to print, when announcing his
intention of reading a fragment of his MS. to him; but it is doubtful
whether he expected to make a noise in the world. He had said what
he wished to say, but not in the manner which he had dreamed of. His
language appeared to him poor, in spite of his efforts to vary his
vocabulary. "The new career which I have adopted," he said, "has not
furnished me with new expressions; I have often to repeat the same.
But notwithstanding its defects, which spring from the incapacity of
the workman, I dare to affirm that the basis of my work is calculated
to throw a great light on every part of nature, and to overthrow the
methods which are employed to study it. What a fertile subject it
would be in happier hands." (Letter to Hennin, December 25, 1783.) For
himself the _Études de la Nature_ was valuable because of the ideas in
it; the form they took was of less importance--a judgment which appears
very singular to us in our day.
There is as much astonishment as pleasure in the first letters where
he tells his old friend of the enthusiastic reception given to his
book by the public. "I receive letters in which I am exalted far
above my merits; I really must have done something quite out of the
common. I have, however, but touched upon the shadows of the reality.
It is but a trifle, the work of a man" (March 1, 1785). Three days
later: "I receive ... private letters from persons with whom I have
no connection, but which praise me too much to allow of my showing
them to any one." The applause grew, reached the provinces, and became
formidable. As is usual, the author quickly got accustomed to it,
and soon learnt to speak with complaisance of the shower of visits,
letters, and invitations to dinner which descended upon his garret. "An
old friend of Jean-Jacques and D'Alembert came to express all sorts
of affection and interest in me, and wished actually to carry me off
to his country house. He appeared to have been particularly struck
with what I have said about plants. Painters are enraptured with what
I have said about the arts; others upon education; and yet more on the
causes of the tides" (March 20, 1785). "It seems that my book makes a
great sensation amongst the clergy; a grand vicar of Soissons, named
M. l'Abbé de Montmignon, came to see me four or five times, and begged
me to accept a lodging with him in his country house, so that I might
satisfy my taste for the fields. I told him that in truth I did wish
for a country house, but not other people's. Another grand vicar of
Agde, called M. l'Abbé de Bysants, came to see me, ... and is going to
take me next Wednesday to visit the Archbishop of Aix, who wishes to
see me in order to speak of me at the convocation of the clergy....
There are five or six great dinners that I have refused during the last
eight days" (April 25). "Sentimental people send me letters full of
enthusiasm; from women I get receipts for my ailments; rich men offer
me dinners; gentlemen of property country houses; authors their works;
men of the world their influence, their patronage, and even money. I
find in all that but the simple testimony of their good will" (June 3).
He is discreet; he keeps to himself the declarations of love by
which a man knows at once that he is become celebrated. None of them
escapes it, let him be writer, statesman, or tenor, and Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre received his share like the rest. One of the first came
from a young Swiss lady of Lausanne, whose letter is a jewel of artless
simplicity. She writes to him that she is young, beautiful, and rich;
that she offers him her hand, with her mother's sanction, but that
being a protestant, she does not wish to marry a Roman Catholic; she
continues, "I wish to have a husband who will love only me, and who
will always love me. He must believe in God, and must serve Him in the
same way that I do; ... I would not be your wife unless we are to work
out our salvation together." He replied evasively: "I think as you do,
and to love, Eternity does not seem to me too long. But before all
people must know one another, and see one another in the world." His
young correspondent found the reply too vague, and sent a friend of
hers to M. de Saint-Pierre to ask him whether or not he would become a
convert. The ambassadress was pressing: "You have said that the birds
sing their hymns, each one in his own language, and that all these
hymns are acceptable in the sight of God; therefore you will become
protestant and marry my friend." M. de Saint-Pierre contended: "I have
never said that a nightingale ought to sing like a blackbird, I shall
therefore change neither my religion nor my song." The negotiation
ended there.
Another suit was pressed upon him by an abbé. The letter began with
reproaches upon the pride of which M. de Saint-Pierre had given proof
on several occasions, and continued in these terms: "My niece is a very
amiable young lady, as artless as innocence itself, pure as a beautiful
spring day, of noble stature, happy countenance ... (we abridge), and
above all, of the best disposition." This niece being only seventeen,
her husband would receive her "straight from the hand of nature, before
society had moulded her to its methods," which is certainly the duty
of the author of the _Études de la Nature_. The lady has not a penny,
but that would evidently not deter the author of the _Études_. "We
believe," wrote her uncle, "you, she, and I, in Providence." We have
not Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's reply, but he did not marry this time
either.
He refused with the same prudence invitations to go and stay with
people in the country. "Benevolence," he said wittily, "is the flower
of friendship, and its perfume lasts as long as one leaves it on its
stem, without plucking it."
He tried to reply to his letters, but had to give up the attempt;
they came now from the whole of Europe. Very soon he was compelled to
refuse them at the post office, for they did not frank them at that
time. He paid upwards of £80 for postage of letters in one year, saw
that glory costs too much, and from that time made a selection of his
correspondence.
At last, joy of joys! The Queen Marie Antoinette mentioned the _Études
de la Nature_ at a dinner at Mme. de Polignac's, and Mme. de Genlis
took the princes, her pupils, to visit the author, the lion of the day,
in his hermitage.
The reasons of this triumph are easily explained. The influence of
Rousseau, which was always growing, had a good deal to do with it.
People only asked to be sentimental, to believe in natural laws, to
make the social organisation responsible for all their ills. Many of
them, too, only asked to rest from the aggressive and dry irreligion
in which they had lived for so long. All the tender souls for whom
scepticism is never anything but a passing mood, hailed with joy the
religious reaction of which the _Études de la Nature_ gave the signal.
This was one of the two principal reasons of its enormous success.
The other great reason was that people were beginning to read the
_Confessions_ and the _Reveries_, just published at Geneva, and that
men's minds were open to poetry, of which they had been for many
generations deprived. Poetry was the thing most wanting in France
at the end of the eighteenth century, and was most in need of being
revived. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a poet, and he brought them a
new poetry that became popular in a few weeks. As to his false science,
it only irritated the scientists. The great public was at that time
very ignorant on all scientific subjects, and quite ready to judge
by sentiment of the origin of volcanoes and the form of the poles.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's theories found zealous partisans, and
seven months had not passed when a candidate at the Sorbonne presented
a thesis in which he compared the _Études de la Nature_ to Buffon's
_Époques de la Nature_, which was a great enemy to final causes, as we
know, and held the natural man to be a mere brute.
Meantime the object of so much praise remained poor. Imitations of his
book appeared on all sides, and took from him the best of his profits.
"Hardly have I gathered a few sheaves," he wrote on the 6th of July,
1785, "than the rats enter my granary." Besides that he worked hard to
pay his debts, which were many. That is why he begged just as before,
pensions from the king and gratuities from the ministers. The habit was
formed, as often happens to men who have had a needy youth.
His first savings (he made them in spite of everything, and that is
what makes it difficult to excuse him this time) were devoted to buying
a cottage and garden in an obscure part of the town, amongst low,
miserable surroundings. His street was not paved, and he said gaily
about it: "Perhaps if my work continues to bring me so many visitors,
the carriage-folk will employ their influence at least to have it
cleaned for me." The ragged neighbours did not frighten him. "When I
came to live amongst the poor in this part of the town," he replied to
remarks, "I took my place amongst the class to which I have belonged
for some time. Everything gave way to the happiness of having a corner
of land to dig and mess about in." Hardly established in it, the naïve
pride of the householder bursts forth in his letters. He had paid for
house and garden £200, and one would think, in reading what he writes
of it, that he possessed an extensive park. He has "an orchard, some
vines," and a large space for flowers. He writes to ask his friends
to give him seeds, bulbs, and plants; one would imagine that all the
species of both hemispheres would not suffice to fill his garden.
As soon as his innocent mania is known, they send him from all sides
enough to fill the parterres of Versailles, but he still finds so much
room that he sows a patch of vegetables.
With all that he is sad and ill. The reaction has been too great. He
writes to Duval: "I have experienced a succession of such vexatious
events ... that I may say the depths of my soul have been shaken by
them." (January 7, 1787). To someone who congratulates him on his
success, he replies: "You only see the flower, the thorn has remained
in my nerves." Little by little he calmed down, recovered himself, and
gained enough courage to dispute the genuineness of the judgment of the
noble tribunal, which had once condemned one part of his work. A fourth
volume of the _Études de la Nature_ appeared in 1788. It contained
_Paul and Virginia_.
The introduction to _Paul and Virginia_ clearly explains the intention
of the author. "I had great designs in this little work. I tried to
depict in it a different soil and vegetation to those of Europe. Our
poets have too long allowed their lovers to repose upon the banks of
streams, in the meadows, and under the foliage of the beech-trees. I
wished to place mine on the seashore, at the foot of the rocks, in
the shadow of the cocoa-nut palms, bananas, and flowering lemon-trees.
It only needs, at the other side of the world, a Theocritus, or a
Virgil, to give us pictures, at least as interesting as those of our
country." The ambition to be the Theocritus and the Virgil of the
tropics, comes out in all that he had hitherto written, but he wished
for something more in his romance, and what follows makes one bless the
insubordination of genius, which goes on its way laughing at the best
made plans. "I also proposed to myself to bring forward in it several
great truths; amongst others this one, that our happiness consists
in living according to nature and virtue." A later edition is still
more explicit: "This little work is but a relaxation from my _Études
de la Nature_, and the application which I have made of its laws to
the happiness of two unhappy families." In other words, Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre meant _Paul and Virginia_ to be an instructive and useful
romance, a sort of lesson in things intended to prove the justice of
the theories developed in his _Études de la Nature_, and the wisdom of
the reforms which he there set forth. His young hero and heroine were
to be the living and striking demonstration of the natural goodness
of man, of the uselessness of our vain sciences, and of an infinite
number of other "great truths" propounded in the course of his work.
Happily the poet was often able to make the philosopher forget his
programme.
It is the poet, the Theocritus of the tropics, who begins. He sings of
a voluptuous nature that squanders her caresses upon two nurslings.
She lulls them to the murmur of the springs, and smiles upon them in
a thousand brilliant colours. Around their cradle is only warmth and
perfume. They develop harmoniously in this solitude, whose gentle
influences are in accord with the gentleness of the sentiments placed
by Providence in the hearts of the newly-born. Nothing could be more
charming than these two beautiful children, "quite naked, according
to the custom of the country, hardly able to walk, holding each other
by the hand and under the arms, as we represent the twins in the
zodiac. Night even could not separate them; they were often found in
the same cradle, cheek to cheek, breast to breast, the hands of each
round the other's neck, asleep in each other's arms." These last lines
are exquisite; it would be impossible better to express the ineffable
graces of the sleep of childhood.
Paul and Virginia grew up, and their games and little adventures are
recounted with the same charm. It is not high art, it is too pretty,
could be too easily turned into a ballad, or used to decorate a
chocolate box, but it is delightful all the same. Besides, the beauty
of some of the pictures is considerably heightened by their frames; for
instance, the two children performing pantomines "like the negroes."
"The place generally chosen for the scenes was the cross-roads of a
forest, whose glades formed around us several arcades of foliage. In
their midst we were sheltered from the heat during the whole day; but
when the sun had sunk to the horizon, his rays, broken by the trunks
of the trees, were divided _among the shadows of the forest into long
luminous beams_, which produced the most majestic effect. Sometimes
his whole disc would appear at the end of one of the avenues, making
it sparkle with light. The foliage of the trees, lighted from below
with the sun's saffron-tinted rays, shone with the glow of the topaz
and the emerald. Their trunks, mossy and brown, seemed to be changed
into columns of antique bronze; and the birds already gone to rest in
silence under the dark leaves, there to pass the night, surprised by
the vision of a second dawn, would salute altogether the star of the
day with a thousand songs." How beautiful and true all this is. This
sudden illumination of a great forest from below by the setting sun,
is as real as it is dazzling. One understands how scenes like that
astonished a generation brought up upon the _Fastes_ of Lemierre and
the _Jardins_ of Delille.
The infancy of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's young hero and heroine is
passed entirely in a a desert, far from all society; and in them can be
verified the statement made in the _Études de la Nature_, that "man is
born good." They only possess virtuous instincts, good feelings, and
not a germ of vice, for these germs are only communicated to us from
without, nature did not place them in us.
Before going further we would remark once again how anti-Christian
these ideas are. The necessity for the Redemption disappears with
original sin, and Christianity altogether is only a superfluity, if
not perhaps even charlatanism. Faith must certainly have been very
weak, when the author of these heresies received from religious
people a rapturous welcome, and from the Church of Rome so benignant
a reception, that the philosophers accused him of being in the pay of
the clergy. Godless ages very soon reach a point where they lose their
sense of religion. Then there comes a general atmosphere of ignorance
and want of intelligence of sacred things, from which Christians who
have retained their belief also suffer; they accustom themselves to be
too inexacting, and not to look too closely into things.
The moment arrives to educate the two children, and to demonstrate
what is also said in the _Études de la Nature_ that, "it is society
which makes evil doers, and it is our education which prepares them."
The philosopher here interrupts the poet, and explains his system.
Paul and Virginia are not "prepared" to become wicked, because they
are brought up far from schools and libraries, without any other
teacher than nature. "All their study was to take delight in and help
one another. For the rest they were as ignorant as creoles, and did
not know how to read or write. They did not disturb themselves about
what had happened in remote times, far from them; their curiosity did
not extend beyond their mountain. They believed that the world ended
where their island did, and they never imagined anything pleasant where
they were not. Their affection for each other and for their mothers,
occupied all the activity of their souls. Useless sciences had never
made their tears flow; lessons of sad morality had never filled them
with weariness. They did not know that they must not steal, for they
had all things in common; nor that they must not be intemperate, for
they had as much as they liked of simple food; nor that they must not
lie, having nothing to hide. No one had ever frightened them by telling
them that God reserves terrible punishments for ungrateful children;
with them filial love was born of maternal love." Daphnis and Chloe had
less innocent souls, less pure from all human teaching; they knew how
to read, and, having flocks to mind, they had, at least, been taught
that thieves exist.
An education so adapted to scandalise the Academies naturally produced
the happiest results. At twelve Paul was "more robust and more
intelligent than Europeans of fifteen." He had more "enlightenment."
Virginia was no less superior to the girls of our countries. For all
that they had no clocks, almanacs, or books of chronology, history, and
philosophy, they were not ignorant, except to our pedantic ideas, as
they possessed the knowledge which the country teaches us. "They knew
the hours of the day by the shadows of the trees, the seasons by the
time which gave them their flowers and their fruits, and the year by
the number of their harvests." They knew the names and characteristics
of all the plants and birds, and of everything which had life in their
valley and its environs. They knew how to make everything necessary to
the life of a man in the country, and they accomplished all these works
with the good temper which comes from health, open air, and the absence
of care. Seeing them so skilful, ingenious, and happy, their mothers
congratulated themselves on having been "compelled by misfortune to
return to nature."
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre foresaw that people might make some
objections, and he hastened to be beforehand with them. "You Europeans,
whose souls are filled from infancy with so many prejudices contrary to
happiness, cannot understand that nature could give so much sagacity,
judgment, and pleasure. Your souls, circumscribed by a small sphere of
human knowledge, soon reach the limit of their artificial pleasures,
but nature and the heart are inexhaustible." "... After all, what need
had these young people to be rich and learned in our manner? their
wants and their ignorance added still more to their happiness. There
was not a day in which they did not impart to each other some help or
some information, ay, real information; and if some errors were mixed
up in it a pure man has no dangerous ones to fear."
There is a touch of declamation about this apostrophe. It threatens to
become a little dull, when the poet awakes, and carries us with a flap
of his wings above all theories and systems. The poet only knows one
thing: his hero and heroine are beautiful, loving, tender, at an age to
love; let them love therefore. All else is forgotten, and Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre in his turn writes, like so many others, the everlasting
romance of sweet fifteen. He writes it with chastity and fire, with a
pure pen, but with deep and stirring passion. Genius just touched him
with its breath for the first and last time, and he writes some pages
of lofty conception such as mere talent however great cannot reach.
"Nevertheless for some time Virginia was agitated by an unknown
trouble. Her beautiful blue eyes had black circles under them; her
complexion became yellow, and a great languor took possession of her.
Serenity was no longer on her brow, nor a smile upon her lips. They saw
her all at once gay without joy, and sad without sorrow. She shunned
her innocent sports, her pleasant labours, and the society of her
beloved family. She wandered hither and thither in the most lonely
parts of the homestead, everywhere seeking repose and finding none....
Sometimes at sight of Paul she would go towards him gaily, then all at
once on getting near to him, a sudden embarrassment would seize her, a
vivid blush would dye her pale cheeks, and her eyes would not dare to
meet his. Paul would say to her, 'These rocks are covered with verdure;
our birds sing when they see thee; everything around thee is gay, thou
only art sad,' and he would try to cheer her by embracing her, but she
would turn away her head and fly trembling towards her mother. The
unhappy girl felt herself troubled by the caresses of her brother. Paul
could not understand such new and strange caprices."
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had so absolutely lost sight of his systems,
that he gives to Virginia the refined modesty which is only generated
in creatures complicated by civilisation. "Children of Nature" are
ignorant of these shy reserves which do not occur at all without a
certain amount of knowledge. Longus is much more to the point when
he depicts the amorous Chloe kissing her Daphnis with all her heart,
and without thinking of any harm, as a "simple girl brought up in the
country, and never having in her life heard even the name of love."
A terrible summer came to increase the mysterious trouble from which
Virginia suffered. "It was towards the end of December when the sun in
Capricorn, for weeks burns the Isle of France with its vertical rays.
The south wind which prevails there nearly the whole year, blew no
longer. Great clouds of dust rose upon the roads and remained suspended
in the air. The earth cracked in all directions; the grass was burnt;
warm exhalations issued from the sides of the mountains, and most
of the brooks were dried up. Not a cloud came from the side of the
sea, only during the day a ruddy vapour would rise from its plains,
appearing at sunset like the blaze of a conflagration. Night even
brought no coolness to the heated atmosphere. The moon, quite red, rose
in the misty horizon with extraordinary grandeur. The flocks, prostrate
upon the hill-sides, inhaling the air, made the valleys echo with their
sad bleatings. Even the Kafir tending them lay upon the earth to find
some coolness there; but everywhere the ground was burning, and the
stifling air resounded with the hum of insects, trying to quench their
thirst in the blood of men and animals."
The drama now develops itself in strict accordance with these exterior
sensations. "On one of those sultry nights Virginia felt all the
symptoms of her malady redoubled. She rose, sat up, lay down again,
not finding in any attitude sleep or repose. By the light of the moon
she directed her steps towards the spring. She could see its source
which, in spite of the drought, still flowed like a silver thread along
the brown surface of the rock. She plunged into its trough, and at
first the coolness revived her, and a thousand agreeable recollections
presented themselves to her mind. She remembered that in her infancy
her mother and Marguerite amused themselves by bathing her with Paul
in this same place; that Paul afterwards, reserving this bath for her,
had hollowed it out, covered the bottom with sand, and sown on its
margin aromatic herbs. She caught a glimpse in the water on her bare
arms and bosom of the reflections of two palm-trees, planted at her
own and her brother's birth, which interlaced their green branches and
young cocoa-nuts above her head. She thought of Paul's friendship,
sweeter than perfume, purer than the waters of the springs, stronger
than the united palm-trees, and she sighed. She thought of the night,
of solitude; and a devouring fire took possession of her. She rose
at once, afraid of these dangerous shadows, and these waters more
burning than the suns of the Torrid Zone. She ran to her mother to
seek protection from herself. Several times, wishing to tell her her
sufferings, she took her hands between her own, several times she was
near breathing Paul's name, but her oppressed heart left her tongue
without speech, and laying her head on her mother's breast she could
only burst into floods of tears."
A tempest ravages their valley and destroys their garden, leaving
however after it a feeling of peace and repose. Virginia restored,
becomes once more familiar and affectionate with Paul, but it is only a
flash of light in the darkness, which disappears with the expansion of
nerves produced by the cool damp air.
Already while his hero and heroine were but infants, Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre showed us how nature, even at that early age, mingled in
their pleasures and needs, so that "their life seemed one with that of
the trees, like the fauns and hamadryads." Now it is in their passions
that nature takes part, and with what intensity the scene of the bath,
and the return of intimacy after the storm show us vividly. The author
profits by the characters he has in hand to realise a conception
already old, and establish a bond, henceforth indissoluble, between
the human soul and its surroundings. The bond existed before his time;
it is as old as the world and it acts, without their knowledge, upon
the most uncultured beings. But in the age and surroundings where men
have learnt to recognise it, to be conscious of it, it requires so much
strength and importance that we may be allowed to welcome it as a new
force. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre pointed it out, showed it at work,
and the lesson was not lost. Chateaubriand was twenty at the time of
the appearance of _Paul and Virginia_. When his René cries out amidst
the whistling of the wind, "Be swift to gather ye tempests that I have
longed for," he does not know whether he is speaking of real storms or
of those in his soul. He confounds them, and no one is unaware how
much poetical inspiration has been given to our age by this confusion
between our feelings and external impressions.
Let us remark in passing that it was not worth while being so indignant
in the _Études de la Nature_ against those who dared to say that morals
vary with the climate. The fragments which we have just read bring us
to exactly the same conclusion.
It is also a landscape which prepares us, if I may so express it, for
the scene of the love-confession, when after the episode of the letter
which calls Virginia away to France, the two young people go out after
supper to spend their last evening together. They seat themselves upon
a hillock and at first remain absolutely silent.
It was one of those delicious nights so common in the tropics, whose
beauty no brush however skilful can paint. The moon appeared in the
midst of the firmament, surrounded with a curtain of clouds which were
gradually dispersed by her rays. Her light spread by degrees over the
mountains of the island, and over their highest peaks which shone with
silvery green. The winds held their breath. One heard in the woods, in
the depths of the valleys, and on the rocky heights, little cries,
soft murmurs of birds billing and cooing in their nests, happy in the
moonlight and the tranquility of the air. On the ground everything
seemed to be stirring, even the insects.
The night seemed to breathe of love: an intoxicating languor stole over
the two lovers, and they spoke at last and confessed their secret.
Paul's speech is a little too set, the phrases too smooth, too careful.
Virginia's reply is full of passion and impulse, even when we abridge
it, and only retain the cry at the end: "Oh, Paul, Paul! thou art much
dearer to me than a brother! How much has it not cost me to hold thee
at a distance!... Now whether I remain or go, live or die, do with me
as thou wilt...." At these words Paul clasped her in his arms.
Virginia departs, and with her goes the inspiration. Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre seems to be filled with remorse for having lingered over
trifles which have taught us nothing, unless it is that love belongs
to the number of "natural laws" which govern our earth (we ourselves
rather question it). He tries to make up for lost time, and succeeds
only too well, for until the final catastrophe, we never cease to
be taught, and to verify the truth of the ideas propounded in the
_Études de la Nature_. Paul learns to read and write so as to be able
to correspond with Virginia, and he loses at once his tranquility
of mind. What he learns from romances makes him uneasy and jealous:
"His knowledge already makes him unhappy." He talks sometimes with the
other inhabitants, but their slander, their vain gossip are so many
more causes of sorrow; why was he so imprudent as to leave his desert?
"Solitude restores man in part to natural happiness, by keeping from
him social unhappiness."
He becomes ambitious, dreams of gaining "some high position" so as to
be more worthy of Virginia. The old man reveals to him that all the
roads are closed to those who have neither birth nor fortune. Here
follows a digression upon hereditary nobility, the traffic in public
offices, the indifference of the great to virtue.
Paul declares that he will attach himself to some "society." "I
shall entirely adopt its spirit and its opinions," he says; "I shall
make myself liked." The old man reprimands him severely for his weak
desire to cling to something. Another digression upon the sacrifice of
conscience demanded by societies which "besides interest themselves
very little in the discovery of truth."
In despair of his cause Paul decides to be a writer. One can imagine
how this is received. The old man draws so black a picture of the
persecutions which attend men of letters, that the poor boy is
terrified at the thought of the sufferings which each book represents,
and exclaims, embracing a tree planted by Virginia, "Ah! she who
planted this papaw-tree has given the inhabitants of these forests a
more useful and charming present than if she had given them a library."
Further digression upon the Gospel and the Greek philosophers.
This is the part that Mme. Necker, at the time of the famous reading in
her salon, compared to "a glass of iced water." The criticism was just.
The author himself was chilled by the dialogues between Paul and the
old man, and cannot regain the passion which carried him so high just
before. The shipwreck of the _Saint-Géran_, 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.
Let us forget the didactic portions of the work, and the old preacher
who is no other than Bernardin himself. There remains a love-story,
one of the most passionate ever written in any language. The more one
re-reads it, the less one understands how it could have been taken for
an innocent and somewhat insipid pastoral. Sainte-Beuve was surprised
at it even forty years ago. "This charming little book," he writes,
"which Fontanes placed a little too conventionally, perhaps, between
_Telémaque_ and _La Mort d'Abel_ (de Gesner), I should myself place
between _Daphnis and Chloe_, and that immortal fourth book in honour of
Dido." Theophile Gautier declared that _Paul and Virginia_ appeared to
him to be the most dangerous book in the world for young imaginations.
He recalls the fervid emotion which he himself felt in reading it,
and which was never equalled later by any other book.[23] These two
criticisms have nothing exaggerated in them. The place of Virginia
with her beautiful eyes and their black circles, is in the front rank
of illustrious lovers, between Chloe, passionate and simple, and the
despairing Dido. Nevertheless, such is the empire of the commonplace,
that by dint of being enraptured over the grace and sentiment of
Bernardin's narrative, one has become accustomed more and more to see
in it but a superior Berquin, and to relegate it insensibly to the
literature of childhood. More than one reader was scandalized just now
that we dared to speak freely of a sacred masterpiece, though he has
not read _Paul and Virginia_ since the days when he bowled his hoop,
and would have been much surprised if it had been proposed to him.
At the time when the book was most in favour, curiosity was rife to
know how far it was a true story. The problem does not interest us
to-day, except for what it teaches us about the author's manner of
composition. Our realistic novelists would find little to change in it.
The framework is true. The landscapes are copied from nature and
perfected by a divination as to what would be the tropical vegetation
in a country more fertile than the Isle of France. "_Paul and
Virginia_," Humboldt wrote, "has accompanied me to the countries which
inspired Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. I have re-read it during many
years with my companion.... When the noonday sky shone with its pure
brightness, or in rainy weather, on the shores of the Orinico, while
the rolling thunderstorm illuminated the forest; and we were struck,
both of us, with the admirable truth with which, in so few pages,
the powerful nature of the tropics in all their original features is
represented."
The principal characters of _Paul and Virginia_, those whom he took
pains to make alive, are formed of traits borrowed from flesh and blood
models, and arranged according as they were needed. We have already
said that the author put himself into the book in the character of the
old man. In his heroine he has recalled two charming girls whom he had
met at one time in Russia and at Berlin, Mlle. de la Tour, and Mlle.
Virginie Taubenheim.
Longus furnished the primitive idea of the narrative; the
transformation of friendship into love at a fatal moment between two
young people brought up together. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre also
borrowed from him several points of detail; there are in the first half
of _Paul and Virginia_ some passages which very closely follow _Daphnis
and Chloe_.
The description of the manners of the Isle of France was exact when
it was written. Reminiscences of several periods suggested the
episodes. The pretty scene of the children sheltering themselves from
the rain under Virginia's petticoat had been observed by Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre in the Faubourg Saint Marceau. The tragedy of the
dénoument had been related to him; he did not see it himself, whence it
doubtless comes that it looks rather as though it had been arranged.
"He only knew how to write about what he had seen," said Aimé Martin;
but what he had seen he always illustrated, and one might even give as
an epigraph to _Paul and Virginia_ the title which Goethe chose for his
memoirs: _Poetry and Truth_.
The book was praised up to the skies the moment it appeared. It was
translated into English, Italian, German, Dutch, Russian, Polish, and
Spanish. Upwards of three hundred imitations were written in French.
It was put into novels, plays, pictures, and popular engravings.
Mothers called their newly-born children Paul or Virginia. Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre was decidedly a great man, and in 1791 when the National
Assembly drew up a list from among which to choose a governor for the
Dauphin, his name figures in it, in company with that of Berquin, of
Saint-Martin, called the _unknown philosopher_, of de Sieyes and of
Condorcet; a strange medley that says a good deal for the disorder
which at that time reigned in men's minds.
This brilliant success was not a mere flare up. Some years later we
find the Bonaparte family showing a marked enthusiasm. First there is
a letter signed Louis Bonaparte, in which the author relates that he
had wept so much in reading _Paul and Virginia_ that he would like to
know what is true in the story, "so that another time in re-reading
it I can say to myself to comfort my afflicted feelings--'this is
true, this is false.'" Then comes a note from General Bonaparte,
commanding the army in Italy, who finds time between two battles to
write to M. de Saint-Pierre: "Your pen is a paint brush; all that
you paint one can see; your works charm and comfort us; you will be
one of the men whom I shall see oftenest and with most pleasure in
Paris." After the letters came visits from Louis, from Joseph, from
Napoleon, who flatter and praise the writer of the day. His book never
leaves them; during the campaign in Italy, "it reposed under the
pillow of the General-in-Chief, as Homer did under that of Alexander."
Joseph endeavoured to imitate it in a pastoral called _Moïna_, which
he respectfully submitted to Saint-Pierre. Napoleon envies from the
bottom of his soul the peaceful existence of his host "in the bosom
of nature." He expresses himself in accents of such sincerity that
Bernardin hastens to offer him a small country house of which he had
become the proprietor. The "Conqueror of Italy smiled in rather an
embarrassed manner and murmured in a low voice some words about his
retinue, equipment, and repose from labour," but he redoubled his
politeness, and invited the celebrated man to dinner. Matters became
somewhat strained when the celebrated man refused to enrol himself
amongst the paid journalists. However, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre never
had to complain of the Empire, and on his side Napoleon remained
faithful to his admiration for _Paul and Virginia_; we are assured that
he re-read it several times at Saint Helena.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] Theophile Gautier, _Souvenirs intimes_, by Mme. Judith Gautier.