WORKS OF HIS OLD AGE--THE TWO MARRIAGES--DEATH OF BERNARDIN DE
SAINT-PIERRE--HIS LITERARY INFLUENCE.
We have not yet got through half the _Complete Works_, and our task is
nearly done. With the exception of certain pages, pleasant or valuable
for the information which they contain, the rest might as well not have
been published; the reputation of the author would have lost nothing
by it. In the month of September, 1789, appeared the _Voeux d'un
solitaire_. The opening promises something rural:
"On the first of May, of this year 1789, I went down into my garden
at sunrise to see what condition it was in after the terrible winter,
in which the thermometer on the 31st of December had gone down to 19°
below freezing....
"On entering it I could see neither cabbages nor artichokes, white
jasmin nor narcissus; almost all my carnations and hyacinths had
perished; my fig-trees were dead, as were also my laurel-thyme which
generally flowered in January. As for my young ivy, its branches were
dried and its leaves the colour of rust.
"However, the rest of my plants were doing well although their growth
was retarded three weeks. My borders of strawberry-plants, violets,
thyme, and primroses were variegated green, white, blue, and red; and
my hedges of honeysuckle, raspberry, and gooseberry bushes, roses and
lilacs were all covered with leaves and buds. My avenues of vines,
apple-trees, pear-trees, peach-trees, plum-trees, cherry-trees, and
apricots were all in blossom. In truth, the vines were only beginning
to open their buds, but the apricots had already their fruit set.
"At this sight I said to myself," ... what he said to himself were
certain reflections upon the "interests of the human race," and upon
"the revolutions of nature," which remind him of "those of the state,"
... "and I said to myself kingdoms have their seasons like the country,
they have their winter and their summer, their frosts and their dews:
the winter of France is passed, her spring is coming. Then full of hope
I seated myself at the end of my garden on a little bank of turf and
clover, in the shadow of an apple-tree in blossom, opposite a hive, the
bees of which hovered about humming on all sides.... And I began to
have aspirations for my country." We know already from the _Études de
la Nature_ what his aspirations were; they were nothing very original
or bold considering it was the year 1789, after the taking of the
Bastille. Saint-Pierre demands that every employment shall be open to
all, that individual liberty shall be assured, that there shall be an
end put to clerical abuses, &c. The book had no success and possesses
no interest for us; we may proceed.
Two years after the _Voeux? d'un solitaire_, in 1791, appeared the
tale entitled _La Chaumière Indienne_. A party of learned Englishmen
(the Academies again!) undertake to start an encyclopædia. Each member
receives a list of 3,500 questions, and sets out for a different
country in order "to seek for ... information upon all the sciences."
The most learned of the band travels overland to the Indies, and on
his way makes a collection of MSS. and rare books forming "ninety
bales weighing altogether 9,550lbs. troy." He converses "with Jewish
rabbis, protestant ministers, superintendents of Lutheran churches,
catholic doctors, academicians from Paris, la Crusca, the Arcades, and
twenty-four others of the most famous academies of Italy, Greek popes,
Turkish mollahs, Armenian priests, the Seids, and Persian priests,
Arab sheiks, ancient Parsees, and Indian pundits." He prepares to
return to London, enchanted to possess "such a splendid cargo of
information," when he perceives that all he has learnt, all he has
collected, only serve to confuse and render obscure the 3,500 questions
on his list. In despair he goes to consult a celebrated Brahmin, who
only tells him that the Brahmins know everything and tell nothing. A
storm obliges him, just in the nick of time, to ask shelter in the
cottage of a pariah, and this man teaches him more in an hour about the
way to find the truth than all the academies of the world had been able
to teach him in several years. One guesses that the pariah did not know
how to read or write, and that his secret consisted in studying nature
"with his heart and not with his mind." This amusing slight fancy is
told gracefully and pleasantly.
Meanwhile the terror approached, and in spite of certain alarms, it was
one of the most tranquil periods of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's life.
After some months passed at the Jardin des Plantes, of which he was for
a short time governor, he looked on at the revolutionary storm from the
depths of a charming retreat, chosen by him, arranged by him, and which
he owed to the mania of women to marry celebrated men.
We have not forgotten that from the moment of his first literary
success several people proposed to him. After _Paul and Virginia_
romantic and sensitive hearts turned more than ever towards him, and
at last he allowed himself to be touched. The daughter of his printer,
Mlle. Félicité Didot, had loved him for a long time. She "did not fear
to own it to him," and was rewarded for so doing: he consented to marry
her. He was fifty-five, she twenty.
He consented, making his own conditions however; his letter to Mlle.
Didot is categorical. He wishes for a secret marriage. Further, he
insists that his father-in-law shall buy him an island at Essonnes, and
build him a house there. "It will take three months to build the house
and make it habitable; when it is ready your parents will retire to
Essonnes, taking you with them, and I shall rejoin you there for our
marriage. I shall have a house, an island, and a wife, without any one
in Paris knowing anything about it. I shall establish you on my island
with a cow, some fowls, and Madelon, who understands to perfection how
to raise them. You will have books, flowers, and the neighbourhood of
your parents. I shall certainly come to see you as often as possible."
According to what follows in the correspondence this arrangement was
not to Mlle. Didot's taste. She dreamed of sharing his glory, and he
offered her the post of his housekeeper. He did not insist upon the
secret marriage, but on the question of the country he would not give
in, declaring that he could only be happy there. "When my business
forces me to be in Paris, I shall write to you frequently. You will
be the reward of my labours; I shall come to forget in your bosom
the troubles of the town. Until I can have you always with me as my
companion, I shall come and pass weeks, whole months with you. This
is my plan of life. I shall rise in the morning with the sun. I shall
go into my library and occupy myself with some interesting study, for
I have a large amount of material to put in order. At ten breakfast,
which you will have prepared yourself (he held to this) will re-unite
us. After breakfast I shall return to my work, and you can accompany
me, if the cares of the household do not call you elsewhere; I presume
that you will occupy yourself with them in the morning. At three
o'clock a dinner of fish, vegetables, poultry, milk-food, eggs, and
fruit produced on our island, will keep us an hour at table. From four
to five rest, and a little music; at five, when the heat will have
passed, fishing, or a walk in our island until six. At six we shall go
to see your parents and walk in the neighbourhood. At nine a frugal
supper."
Mlle. Didot understood that she might take it or leave it, and resigned
herself to become the head-servant of the Island of Essonnes. If she
had cherished any illusions as to what was before her, she was not long
in losing them. The letters which her husband wrote to her after their
marriage have been published. This is the beginning of the first one,
written during a journey of Mme. de Saint-Pierre to Paris.
"I send thee, my dear, some wire for my tenant, your mother's
carpet-bag, some potatoes, some beetroots, which thou dost not much
like, but which necessity will perhaps render agreeable to thee. If
thou wilt share them with citizen M---- junior, thou wilt give me
pleasure. In this case thou wilt send Madelon with them, and wilt give
her also the wire intended to clear the conduit to the well of my
house...."
Then comes a long paragraph on the nails of various kinds of which he
has need for his workmen, and he continues: "Dost thou remember how
many handkerchiefs I had? there were only eleven here," and in a P.S.,
"There is no sugar here at all, send me a pound of moist sugar."
He had not deceived her, nevertheless his happiness was great in this
first union. He did not certainly use much coquetry with this young
wife, who was about thirty years younger than himself. Everlasting
household details: "Send me some apples." ... "Sow some cucumbers." ...
"Do not forget the haricot beans." ... "Why have a pig when we have
need of potatoes?" It was not worth while having married a poet! As for
him, the country enchanted him, and he left his island as seldom as
possible. He endeavoured to ignore events in Paris, so as to be able
to prepare in peace his _Harmonies de la Nature_. "Putting aside all
newspapers and books which might have told him of the mad excitement
of his country, he made a solitude of his enclosure; and when the
mists and hoar frost on the trees bare of leaves and singing birds,
made the country look sad, _Virgil's eclogues_, _Telemachus_, and the
_Vicar of Wakefield_, gave him in an ideal world, the happiness which
no longer existed on the earth."[24] Let us remember this passage. The
circumstances under which the _Harmonies_ were composed explain the
work.
The death of his father-in-law brought him back willingly or
unwillingly to the world of reality. There was a burdensome
liquidation, family dissensions, and worries of all kinds. Then Mme. de
Saint-Pierre died in her turn, leaving a daughter Virginia, and a son
Paul. It was a general breaking up of things.
There are some people magnificently obstinate in being happy. Bernardin
had the courage to begin life again. At sixty-three he married a pretty
little schoolgirl, Mlle. Désirée de Pelleporc, whose exercises it
amused him to correct, and who was dazzled with the idea of marrying
the author of _Paul and Virginia_. He found that he had done quite
the right thing. There is no more any question of cabbages in his
letters to his second wife. Bernardin is in love, he wishes to please,
and this old grey-beard finds again his imagination of twenty to
write to his Désirée, his "joy," his "dear delight," his "everlasting
love." She is ailing. "Do not distress thyself; I shall work beside
thee; I shall comfort thee with my affection; I shall kiss thy feet
and warm them with my love." She writes to him and he is overcome
with admiration: "Ah! how full of charm is thy last letter! it is an
enchanting combination of youthful imagery, tenderness, philosophy, and
loving religion. I admired that last thought of thine, it is new, it is
sublime--ah! my second providence! &c. I have sent to invite Ducis to
come and see us. If thou hadst not made me full of love for thee, thou
wouldst have filled me with pride."
Poor Félicité never had so much attention in her life as Désirée in
this one day, and that is not all; the letter ends thus: "I believe
that the new moon of yesterday will make a change in the weather.
Meantime she has announced herself by heavy showers; but this abundance
of water accelerates the growth of the vegetables; it is necessary to
their progress and their needs: the month of May is an infant who would
always be at the breast. I embrace thee, my love, my delight, my month
of May. (_Signed_) Thy friend, thy lover, thy husband."
Sainte-Beuve thought this ending charming. "This month of May" he says,
"which is _an infant that would always be at the breast_, is it not the
most graceful and most speaking picture, above all addressed to a young
wife, a young mother?"
It is Bernardin who now does the commissions, and he does not bring
Désirée any nails or moist sugar. Not a bit of it! He brings her
crayons and colours, perfumery, a fine tent for her garden. His
impatience to return is extreme; he no longer lives away from her, is
capable of nothing without her. "The absence of the clear-sighted wife
leaves the husband only one eye to see with, deprives him of the best
part of his senses. Thy absence, my angel, throws me more and more
into a state of indolence which I cannot overcome. It is absolutely
imperative that I come to see thee, and that thou return, my love." In
another letter: "I must return to kindle my flame in the sunlight of
thy presence.... Good-bye, my delight; I wish to live and die beside
thee."
He does not doubt that the whole universe shares in this admiration for
Désirée, who was moreover really charming, and the joy of his old age.
One day when she is alone at Eragny, their country house on the Oise,
which had taken the place of the island of Essonnes, her husband sends
her some details about the battle of Eylau. He tells her that two days
before the battle Napoleon had written in an album found in a country
house: "Happy retreat of peace, why art thou so near to the scene
of the horrors of war?" "Does it not seem," continues Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre, "that he was thinking of our Eragny? If he had seen thee
there with our dear family, dost thou think he would ever have fought
that battle? I warn thee that if it falls to my turn to address him, I
shall charge thee with the correction of my speech." Mlle. de Pelleporc
had certainly not been taken in like Mlle. Didot.
It was in his capacity of Academician that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
was liable to be called upon to address the Emperor. He had belonged
to the Academy[25] ever since Napoleon had re-established it (1803). He
had belonged to the Institute in the division of moral and political
science from its foundation in 1795. In the same year he had charge
of the course of ethics at the Normal School, and the Normal School
had been suppressed almost directly, which was very lucky, for he did
not know how to speak. The elevation of the Bonaparte family sufficed
to crown his old age. He was pensioned, decorated, and well treated
by the Emperor. The Parisian world petted and flattered him. On one
of his journeys to Paris he writes to his second wife: "What is to
become of our former dreams of rural solitude? How is it possible, in
the midst of so much writing to be answered, and of visits active and
passive, to make a fair copy of any pages of my old or new _Études_?
I am like the corn-beetle, living happily in the midst of his family,
in the shadow of the harvest-field; should a ray of the rising sun
light up the emerald and gold of his sheath, then the children seeing
him, take possession of him and shut him up in a little cage, choking
him with cake and flowers, believing that they make him happier with
their caresses than he was in the bosom of his family." Of course not a
word of this great boredom is to be believed in. The little beetle is
enchanted, like all literary beetles, to be covered with flowers and
shut up in those beautiful cages which are called aristocratic salons.
He would be perfectly happy if he had a good temper.
But his temper is worse than ever. He had never had so many quarrels,
and there is a concert of recrimination among his colleagues. The
Academy is his favourite field of battle, and two of its sittings
above all have, thanks to him, remained memorable. At the first one he
was in the right; it was in 1798. Religion was still suppressed, and
many people would not allow the name of God to be spoken. Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre had been entrusted with the report upon some meeting, and
into this report he had bravely insinuated a profession of religious
faith. Cries of fury arose in the hall, and through the noise one heard
Cabanis crying out: "I swear that there is no God! and I demand that
his name shall not be mentioned within these walls!" Another wished to
do battle with the blasphemer, and prove to him, sword in hand, that
God did not exist. They all abused him threatened him, and laughed at
him, but he held his own against the storm, and refused to efface the
scandalous passage. The Academy refused to read his report in open
meeting.
His other great battle was in favour of a less glorious cause. He
found means to raise a tempest apropos of the Dictionary, in which he
wished to insert some sentiment. "Just imagine," he wrote to Désirée,
"that they have put in their Dictionary under the word _appertain_,
'It appertains to a father _to chastise his children_.' I told them
that it was strange that among a hundred duties which bind a father
to his children, they should have chosen the one which would make him
odious to them. Thereupon Morellet the harsh, Suard the pale, Parny
the amorous, Naigeon the atheist, and others all quoted the Scripture,
and all talking at once, assailed me with passages from it, and
united themselves against me as they always do. Then, becoming warm
in my turn, I told them their quotations were those of pedants and
collegians, and that if I were alone in my opinion, I should hold it
against them all. They put it to the vote, all raising their hands to
heaven, and as they congratulated themselves on having a very large
majority, I told them that I challenged their statement because they
were all celibates. These are the kind of scenes to which I expose
myself when I wish to uphold some natural truth; but it suits me from
time to time to defend the laws of nature against people who only know
those of fortune and credit." (Letter of September 23, 1806.)
It was hard on him! He had persuaded himself that he was persecuted
by the Institute. In his mind the chief occupation of the Institute
was to invent some bad turn against M. de Saint-Pierre. In 1803 Maret
asked him for his vote. Bernardin replies: "Of what use can the vote
of a solitary man be to you, one who has long been persecuted by the
body to which you aspire? It can only do you harm. The atheists who
govern the Institute, and against whom I have never ceased to contend,
have not only deprived me of all influence, be it in preventing me
from reading from the tribune at our public meetings the papers which
my class have prepared for that purpose; be it in hindering me from
obtaining the smallest post to help me to bring up my family, but they
have even taken pleasure in publishing abroad that the First Consul
said on one occasion: 'I shall never give any employment to a writer
who disseminates error.' Thus they have even deprived me of hope.
"That is not all, they have lately been trying to take from me my
actual means of subsistence." Here follows a long list of grievances.
He has only received £24 indemnity on an occasion when other members
of the Academy have had £48; one of his pensions has been reduced £2
per month; his works have been mutilated by the Censor; he hardly dares
to present to the public his theory of the tides for fear of sharing
the fate of Galileo; he expects to be exiled, compelled to find at a
distance a spot "wherein to place the cradles of his three children
and his own grave." The admiration of the world would be powerless to
protect him against the stubborn animosity of his colleagues in the
Institute. "I resemble those saints who attract from afar the homage
and the prayers of men, but who near at hand are bitten by insects."
This is all nonsense; he had discussed persecutions too much with J. J.
Rousseau.
It is not surprising that he was detested by most of his colleagues.
Andrieux remembers M. de Saint-Pierre as "a hard, ill-natured man." It
is just to add that those who liked him--Ducis, for instance--liked
him very much, and that he knew how to take pains to keep his friends.
There was no middle course with him: he was hateful or delightful.
He continued to write to the end of his life. "He made a point," says
his biographer, "of never letting a single day pass without writing
down some observations on nature, if it were only a single line.
The result was, in the long run, a multitude of rough notes, hardly
decipherable, written upon scraps of paper, which he compared to the
Sibylline leaves blown about by the wind, and of which, according
to the intention of the author, we have collected the best in his
_Harmonies_."
He also continued to publish without succeeding in shaking his
reputation, though it was not his fault if it remained intact, for from
the date of the _Chaumière Indienne_ one can count on one's fingers the
pages which are not worthless.
The _Harmonies de la Nature_ (three vols., 1796) is only a tame
repetition of the _Études de la Nature_. We must recall under what
conditions the _Harmonies_ was written. It required a miracle of faith
or fixed resolution to persevere under the Terror, in teaching that
there is no evil in the heart of man any more than in the rest of
creation. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre accomplished this miracle, but it
was useless for him to shut himself up in his study with _Telemachus_
and the _Vicar of Wakefield_; inspiration did not come, and he had to
content himself with sifting the same ideas with nothing new but a
degree more of exaggeration.
The arguments in favour of final causes surpass in naïveté, if
possible, those of the _Études_. The foresight of creation has no
limit: "Not only has nature given us vegetation suitable to our
physical needs, but she has produced some in connection with our moral
enjoyment which have become the symbols of it by the duration of their
verdure; such as the laurel for victory, the olive for peace, the palm
for glory. They have been made to grow on all those sites which by
their melancholy and religious aspect seem destined for burial places."
These last, which nature has created expressly "to decorate our tombs,"
and which for this reason are named "funereal trees," are divided into
two groups having "opposite characteristics. Those in the first group
let their long and slender branches trail to the earth, and one sees
them waving about at the pleasure of the wind, looking dishevelled and
as though deploring some misfortune. The second group of funereal trees
includes those which grow in the form of obelisks or pyramids. If the
dishevelled trees seem to carry our regrets towards the earth, these
with their upright branches seem to direct our hopes heavenwards."
This example will suffice.
The goodness of man appears to him to be more apparent than ever. "I
repeat, for the consolation of the human race, moral evil is as foreign
to man as physical evil, both only spring from a deviation from the
natural law. Nature made man good." This goodness would be plain to
all at once if they would put into practice M. de Saint-Pierre's plan
of education, and it could hardly be put off much longer. "A day will
come, and I already see its dawn, when Europeans will substitute in the
hearts of their children the wish to serve their fellow-creatures for
the fatal ambition to be the first amongst them, and when they will
recognise that the interest of each of them is the interest of the
human race."
A few new scientific ideas come in to prove that the author is
incorrigible on this point. "If the forces of the vegetable kingdom
reflect and augment the heat of the sun, if they effect the atmosphere
and the water, they have no less influence upon the solid globe of
the earth, of which they extend the circumference from year to year.
It is quite certain that each plant leaves upon the globe a solid
and permanent deposit, and that it is out of the sum total of these
vegetable remains that the circumference of the globe is annually
augmented." We could have pardoned him this theory before the works of
Lavoisier, but coming after, they betray a greater amount of ignorance
than can be allowed even to a poet in speaking of science.
He has also an extraordinary theory upon the chemical composition of
the sun. "If it were allowed to a being as limited as I am to dare
to speculate about a star which I have not even had the happiness to
see through a telescope, I should say that the _material of which
it is composed is gold_, because gold is the heaviest of all known
metals; which would apply to the sun placed in the centre of our
universe.... Its light ... gilds every object that it strikes, and
seems to be volatilised gold.... We are assured that it forms the gold
in the depths of the earth." Mystical reasons confirm Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre in his opinion. "Gold is the prime mover in societies of
human beings as the sun is in the universe. Gold sets in motion all
social harmonies amongst civilised as well as uncivilised peoples."
It is always through sentiment that he makes his scientific
discoveries. "Evidence is but the harmony of the soul with God ... thus
the mind has no science if the heart has no conscience. Certainty is
then after all a sentiment, and this sentiment is only the result of
the laws of nature.... I should then define science as the sentiment of
the laws of nature in relation to man.... This definition of science in
general applies to all sciences in particular.... Astronomy ... is only
the feeling of the laws which exist between the stars and men."
In virtue of "the laws which exist between the stars and men," he
knows that the other planets are inhabited, and he could describe their
Fauna and Flora, their landscapes, and the manners of the inhabitants.
The men on the planet Mercury are philosophers; those on Venus "must
give up all their time to love," to the dance, to festivals and songs.
The character of those of Jupiter no doubt resembles that of the
maritime peoples of Europe; "they must be industrious, patient, wise,
and thoughtful, like the Danes, the Dutch, and the English." On all the
planets, the souls of the just fly away after death into the sun, where
they are better placed than anywhere else for enjoying a view of the
whole universe. "It is there without doubt that you are, unfortunate
Jean-Jacques, who, having reached the end of this life, behold a new
one in the sun!" It is there that Bernardin hopes to go to find again
his master, and from whence in spirit he sees himself throwing "a
triumphant glance to earth where men weep, and where he is no longer."
So ends the _Harmonies de la Nature_ in a sort of ecstasy.
It is deadly dull reading. You are soon surfeited, as after a feast
of nothing but sweet dishes. There is too much feeling, too much
happiness; the world is too well-arranged and engineered, too highly
coloured and varnished. One agrees in the judgment which the book
inspired in Joubert: "Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's style is like a prism
which tires the eyes. After one has read him for long one is charmed
to see that the grass and trees have less colour in nature than they
have in his writings. His harmonies make us love the discords which
he banishes from the world, and which one comes across at every step.
Nature certainly has her music, but happily it is rare. If reality
afforded the melodies which these gentlemen find everywhere, one would
live in an ecstatic languor, and die of inanition."
The works which succeeded to the _Harmonies de la Nature_ are not
worth spending time over any more than his posthumous ones.[26] When
we have excepted the _Café de Surate_, a charming satirical tale of
a few pages, and the fragments on J. J. Rousseau, upon which we have
drawn largely in retracing the history of their acquaintance, we may
dispense with reading the rest. On the whole Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
is complete in a single book, the _Études de la Nature_, on condition
that we take one of the copies perfected by the addition of _Paul and
Virginia_.
His last years were the happiest of his long career. They were passed
innocently in observing his flowers, adoring his young wife, and in
realising at last on paper his project of an ideal colony, without
fatigue or expense. It was the best way. He occupied himself every day
for an hour or two in organising it according to the laws of nature,
bringing up the children there to the sound of horns and flutes, and
obtaining results without a precedent, which he recorded in the annals
of the young state.[27]
The colony was situated on the banks of the Amazon, because, as a
child, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had told himself a story of how he
embarked for the Amazon, and there founded a republic. It was above
all distinguished for a fabulous abundance of everything. On fête days
the citizens took their places at public tables, at which were served
whole whales, without counting an infinity of other dishes. Contempt
of systems had there produced some almost incredible scientific and
industrial successes; people went about in balloons formed like fish,
and capable of being steered; one saw "camels laden with provisions,
led by negroes, and sledges drawn by reindeer." All the inhabitants of
this favoured spot were good, virtuous, and happy.
It was an inoffensive and harmless mania. In the end I really believe
that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was no longer surly and bellicose,
except in the Institute. There he certainly was so, but he paid dearly
for it. What did they not impute to him for crime? They reproached him
for sending his son to college, his daughter to Écouen, after having
written against public education in France. It is what the adversaries
of our university system do every day; we blame and we submit, because
we cannot do otherwise. They reproached him with having been servile
in his intercourse with Napoleon, whom he compared in an academical
oration to an eagle "advancing in the very centre of the storm." He
certainly would have done better not to flatter the master, but he was
in such good company! We pass over other absolutely absurd grievances.
His enemies returned his blows with interest, and, being vindictive, he
died without making peace with them.
In the month of November, 1813, being then in Paris, he felt that his
life was ebbing; several apoplectic attacks had reduced his strength.
He hastened to return to his home at Eragny, to see again his garden,
the forest of Saint-Germain, the banks of the Oise, and there he
slowly passed away, filling his eyes with the splendours of the
world. He awaited death with serenity, as it becomes a sage to await
the accomplishment of a law of nature, talking peacefully with those
around him of the terrors which it generally inspires. He said that
our fear of death arises from the fact that "the thought of it does
not enter familiarly enough into our education." It is always spoken
of as something strange, as a misfortune happened to some one else; we
are even surprised at it, so that there seems to be nothing natural in
an act which is being accomplished ceaselessly. Listen to the history
of a malady he adds: "I do not believe ever to have heard of one in
which death did not come from the fault of the sick person, or from the
doctor; never from the will of God."
His heart never failed him except in seeing his dear Désirée weep. "I
see her," he said, "incessantly occupied in holding back my soul which
is ready to escape." For the last time he had himself carried into his
garden. A Bengal rose-bush was still covered with flowers, but the
winter had turned its leaves yellow. "To-morrow," said the dying man
to his wife, "the yellow leaves will no longer be there." On the 21st
of January, 1814, the earth was white with snow, the air misty, and a
cold wind shook the bare trees. At mid-day the sun pierced through the
mist, and fell upon the face of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who died
breathing the name of God. He was seventy-seven years old. His death
passed unobserved in the midst of the great events which were then
agitating France.
He had intrusted his reputation and his works to his wife; he could
not have left them in better hands. The charming Désirée has been
the faithful and tender guardian of his memory, a guardian sometimes
blind; but who would think of reproaching her with that? She married
again, later, an ardent admirer of her first husband, Aimé Martin,
the author of the great biography of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and
the indefatigable editor of his works. Together they raised an altar
to his memory. One is obliged to challenge Aimé Martin's romantic and
enthusiastic biography, but one could not read without being touched,
the pages in which the youthful love affairs of the hero are poetised
and magnified out of all proportion, for those details can only have
been supplied by his widow. Désirée idealised for posterity even his
most vulgar adventures.
The man was soon forgotten, and then was invented the legend of which
we have spoken at the beginning of this book. The public very much
dislikes to admit that there can be any disagreement between a writer
and his works. It made of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre a reflection of
his writings, a very gentle and universally benevolent man without any
fault except being too over-sensitive. The obstinate combatant of the
Academy became transformed in the imagination of the crowd into an
easy-going man, good-natured and tearful, until his outline was effaced
from men's memory. Nothing remains to-day but an undefined shadow,
a vague something, and this something still finds means to have an
insipid expression. It is a good thing to restore to the original his
angry brow and bitter expression.
An analogous disaster awaited almost all his works. Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre enjoyed the dangerous honour of having disciples much
greater than himself. His unobtrusive halo was lost sight of in the
glitter of Chateaubriand and the radiance of Lamartine. He assisted
at the literary triumphs of the first; but instead of rendering each
other mutual homage, master and disciple treated each other coldly.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre could not without impatience allow "the
most covetous of honour among his heirs," according to the expression
of Sainte-Beuve, to throw him into the shade. Chateaubriand, at
first eulogistic, was not long before he became irritated at hearing
malevolent critics compare the elegant simplicity of his predecessor
to his own pomp of style. Towards the year 1810, some one having asked
Bernardin if he knew Chateaubriand, the old man replied, "No, I do
not know him; I have in my time read some extracts of the _Génie du
Christianisme_; his imagination is too strong." They certainly became
acquainted after the nomination of Chateaubriand to the Academy in
1811. We do not find that anything resulted from it, but the following
lines from the _Memoires d'outre Tombe_: "A man whose brush I have
admired and always shall admire, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, was wanting
in judgment, and unfortunately his character was on a level with his
judgment. How many pictures are spoilt in the _Études de la Nature_ by
the writer's limited intelligence and want of elevation of soul!"
Lamartine, on the contrary, was the most grateful of pupils, always
eager to acknowledge his master, and make the best of him. _Paul and
Virginia_ had been the favourite book of his childhood, and the poet
paid his debt royally to the favourite volume by giving it a place of
honour in two of his own works. Jocelyn read and re-read _Paul and
Virginia_. Graziella is lost from having heard it only once. Her soul,
until then dormant, revealed itself to her in the soul of Virginia.
Her beautiful impassive face becomes suddenly overspread with the
stormy tints and lines of passion. One hour has sufficed to transform
an innocent and joyous child into a palpitating woman, ripe for love
and its sufferings, and it is Bernardin de Saint-Pierre who has
accomplished this miracle.
It was all in vain; such glorious homage could not protect the bulk
of his work against an indifference which became ever more and more
profound. The reputation of the author of the _Études de la Nature_ has
dispersed in our day like smoke, so much so indeed that in establishing
the literary relation of Chateaubriand and Lamartine, their direct
precursor is usually suppressed; they jump over him to J. J. Rousseau.
Every one of us has forgotten what we owe to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
Maurice de Guérin said in 1832, after having read the _Études de la
Nature_: "This book sets at liberty and illuminates a sense which we
all possess, but which is generally obscure and without activity; the
sense which gathers up for us physical beauties, and presents them to
the soul." It has not been given to many writers to awaken amongst
the masses a sleeping faculty, and the event should be of sufficient
importance for us not to lose the remembrance of it. But in our day
we are accustomed to observe this sense which "gathers up physical
beauties" active within us, and increasing without intermission the
treasure of our sensations of incomparable enjoyments. This all seems
so natural to us, that we have no more gratitude for him who "set at
liberty and illuminated" this precious faculty in the souls of our
grandfathers and grandmothers.
There is the same ingratitude amongst modern writers who do not seem
to have remembered what they owe to him. Not content with having
loved nature with a contagious tenderness, Bernardin has bequeathed
to his successors the first grand models of descriptive landscapes,
and restored to the French language a picturesque vocabulary of which
it had been deprived for two hundred years. These are two immense
services by which he has exercised a great influence on the literature
of the nineteenth century. Without the _Études de la Nature_ not
only _René_ and _Atala_, _Jocelyn_ and _Graziella_, but the _Génie
du Christianisme_ and the _Méditations_ would have been different
from what they are. Chateaubriand and Lamartine would have followed a
somewhat different bent, and the whole of the modern school would have
followed their lead. It is a very great honour to have given impulse to
the descriptive literature of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, if
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had not possessed another title to glory his
name would no longer be known except to literary men.
But he had another, over which a very faithful public has undertaken
to watch. The people, who never forget what has profoundly touched
them, have guarded the memory of _Paul and Virginia_. They love these
two children, so beautiful, so unhappy; and we still, find in the
homes of the peasants penny engravings of Épinde's picture in glaring
colours, in which are represented their games, their young love and
their tragical end. On a day of inspiration Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
conquered the glory, enviable above all others, and which is given
to few; he created imaginary but living characters, beings who never
existed, and who nevertheless remain more real and more alive than
thousands of creatures of flesh and blood; more alive, if I dare to say
so, than the heroes and heroines of his most illustrious disciples.
Jocelyn is already forgotten by the world, Atala is no more than an
empty shadow, but the popular imagination will for a long time yet keep
in mind the little Virginia sheltering her Paul under her petticoat,
and those two laughing heads flying together in the shower.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] The Biography, by Aimé Martin.
[25] That is to say to the class of French language and literature at
the Institute which the French Academy revived, except for the title,
at the time of the reorganisation of the Institute by Bonaparte.
(Decreed January 22, 1803.)
[26] We give the titles of them: _De la Nature de la morale_ (1798),
_Voyage en Silésie_ (1807), _La Mort de Socrate_, drama (1808),
_Empsael_ and _la Pierre d'Abraham_, philosophical novels in the form
of dialogues, _le Café de Surate_--fragments on Rousseau, some accounts
of travels, some pamphlets and fragments of the _Amazon_.
[27] See the fragments of the _Amazon_.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Bernardin de St. Pierre, by Arvède Barine