"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 Vœux? 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.