"This unfortunate young man, with a heart torn by the most cruel agitation, came often to visit me, that I might confirm or banish his inquietude, by my experience of the world.
"I live, as I have already told you, a league and a half from hence, upon the banks of a little river which glides along the Sloping Mountain: there I lead a solitary life, without wife, children, or slaves.
"After having enjoyed, and lost, the rare felicity of living with a congenial mind, the state of life which appears the least wretched is that of solitude. It is remarkable that all those nations which have been rendered unhappy by their political opinions, their manners, or their forms of government, have produced numerous classes of citizens altogether devoted to solitude and celibacy. Such were the Egyptians in their decline, the Greeks of the lower empire; and such in our days are the Indians, the Chinese, the modern Greeks, the Italians, and most part of the eastern and southern nations of Europe.
"Thus I pass my days far from mankind whom I wished to serve, and by whom I have been persecuted. After having travelled over many countries of Europe, and some parts of America and Africa, I at length pitched my tent in this thinly-peopled island, allured by its mild temperature and its solitude. A cottage which I built in the woods, at the foot of a tree, a little field which I cultivated with my own hands, a river which glides before my door, suffice for my wants and for my pleasures. I blend with those enjoyments that of some chosen books, which teach me to become better. They make that world, which I have abandoned, still contribute to my satisfaction. They place before me pictures of those passions which render its inhabitants so miserable; and the comparison which I make between their destiny and my own, leads me to feel a sort of negative happiness. Like a man whom shipwreck has thrown upon a rock, I contemplate, from my solitude, the storms which roll over the rest of the world; and my repose seems more profound from the distant sounds of the tempest.
"I suffer myself to be led calmly down the stream of time to the ocean of futurity, which has no boundaries; while, in the contemplation of the present harmony of nature, I raise my soul towards its supreme Author, and hope for a more happy destiny in another state of existence.
"Although you do not descry my hermitage, which is situated in the midst of a forest, among that immense variety of objects which this elevated spot presents, the grounds are disposed with particular beauty, at least to one who, like me, loves rather the seclusion of a home scene, than great and extensive prospects. The river which glides before my door passes in a straight line across the woods, and appears like a long canal shaded by trees of all kinds. There are black date plum trees, what we here call the narrow-leaved dodonea, olive wood, gum trees, and the cinnamon tree; while in some parts the cabbage trees raise their naked columns more than a hundred feet high, crowned at their summits with clustering leaves, and towering above the wood like one forest piled upon another. Lianas, of various foliage, intertwining among the woods, form arcades of flowers, and verdant canopies; those trees, for the most part, shed aromatic odours of a nature so powerful, that the garments of a traveller, who has passed through the forest, retain for several hours the delicious fragrance. In the season when those trees produce their lavish blossoms, they appear as if covered with snow. One of the principal ornaments of our woods is the calbassia, a tree not only distinguished for its beautiful tint of verdure; but for other properties, which Madame de la Tour has described in the following sonnet, written at one of her first visits to my hermitage:
SONNET
TO THE CALBASSIA TREE
Sublime Calbassia, luxuriant tree!
How soft the gloom thy bright-lined foliage throws,
While from thy pulp a healing balsam flows,
Whose power the suffering wretch from pain can free!
My pensive footsteps ever turn to thee!
Since oft, while musing on my lasting woes,
Beneath thy flowery white bells I repose,
Symbol of friendship dost thou seem to me;
For thus has friendship cast her soothing shade
O'er my unsheltered bosom's keen distress:
Thus sought to heal the wounds which love has made,
And temper bleeding sorrow's sharp excess!
Ah! not in vain she lends her balmy aid:
The agonies she cannot cure, are less!
"Towards the end of summer various kinds of foreign birds hasten, impelled by an inexplicable instinct, from unknown regions, and across immense oceans, to gather the profuse grains of this island; and the brilliancy of their expanded plumage forms a contrast to the trees embrowned by the sun. Such, among others, are various kinds of paroquets, the blue pigeon, called here the pigeon of Holland, and the wandering and majestic white bird of the Tropic, which Madame de la Tour thus apostrophised:—
SONNET