I cannot have an opportunity to write to Amsterdam, Monsieur, without availing myself of it to remind you of a man that neither time nor distance will cause to forget the gratitude he owes you nor impair the friendship he has vowed to you. Tell me the state of your health and of your eyes, about which you used to complain, and add news of M. des Maizeaux and M. Le Courayer if you have any. I dwell in a wilderness where I have intercourse only with men that died many centuries ago, and, to tell you the truth, it would suit me very well if those I can do without did not study to ruin rather than serve me. That disadvantage will drive me from my refuge, and maybe I shall remove to some place nearer you.
You must have received my Philosophical Researches[306] as soon as they began to be issued. It is not a book I sent you to read. It is too badly printed and too full of mistakes. It is only a tribute that I wished to pay to friendship and esteem. I should like to have the opportunity, Monsieur, to give you further proofs of this. Hardly affected by the things of this life, I should feel that keenly. I am and shall always be, Monsieur, with inviolable devotedness your most humble and obedient servant,
Saint-Hyacinthe.[307]
Two years after writing the above letter, Saint-Hyacinthe died. We can guess what the end was. While the duns were crowding at the door, the dying man dreamed that his latest scheme would infallibly make him wealthy. A few friends stood firm, however, and honoured the memory of the dashing officer to whom fortune and Paris had once smiled. Thirty years after his death, a person of rank, one night in a drawing-room, began speaking ill of him. "Sir," exclaimed M. de Burigny, who was standing by, "please spare my feelings; you are hurting me to the quick. M. de Saint-Hyacinthe is one of the men I loved the most dearly."
His biographers have questioned whether he ever abandoned the Catholic faith. The former of the two letters published above settles the doubt. But a few extracts from a very scarce posthumous publication show that the English Deists had made a lasting impression upon him:
"Diverse opinions, uncertainty of knowledge; diverse religions, uncertainty of the true one."
"The true religion is entirely contained in the duties prescribed by the law of Nature, which are within reach of every one."
"Because Jesus Christ called Himself the Son of God, we infer that He is God as His Father, and, if it be so, all men are gods, since in the strict meaning of the word we are all children of God, drawing our life from Him and being created after His likeness."
"Pure Deism is the only religion that truly exists."[308]
Strip him of the glamour of adventures and extravagant opinions, he is after all a mere journalist. Take away the Chef d'œuvre, whose success was due to an accident, and Saint-Hyacinthe falls to the level of a Coste or a Desmaizeaux. Yet he deserved better than he got. In his lust for vulgar notoriety, he twice lost sight of fame. With his journalist's insight, he had foreseen the wonderful fortune of Robinson Crusoe, and he allowed a far inferior man to complete the translation. As early as 1715, in his Mémoires littéraires, he had guessed that the time had come for men of letters to make England known in France, and Voltaire his enemy reaped all the benefit of the idea. He might well have asked in later years why he had not signed the Lettres philosophiques. And so in the portrait gallery of Frenchmen who made English literature familiar to their countrymen in the eighteenth century, Saint-Hyacinthe is only a miniature, while Voltaire shines forth in all the glory of a full-length picture.