Bernardin de St. Pierre

by Arvède Barine

"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.