At last, Adolphe Barrot received from the French government the long-awaited instructions to return home; all my preparations were made for setting out. It was in 1839; twenty years had passed over since I left my country, which I was now about to return to with satisfaction. For a long time I had received no news from my mother, and the pleasure which I anticipated from seeing her was troubled by the dread of having new sorrows to experience on my arrival. My mother was then very old; her life had been passed in long tribulations, and in complete sacrifice of self. The numerous moral troubles which she had gone through must have affected her state of health. Besides, I had been so unfortunate: fate seemed to have so roughly treated all my affections, that I could not refrain from thinking that I should never again see her for whom I abandoned my much-loved country. The day for sailing came; yet it was not without a heartfelt grief that I tore myself away from my friends, and bade adieu to the Philippines.
Here ought to terminate the account which I proposed: yet I cannot refrain from dedicating a few lines to my return to my native land.
On board various vessels I passed the coasts of India, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea.
After having often admired the grand works of Nature, I felt a strong desire to see the gigantic works executed by the hand of man.
I went to Thebes, and there visited in detail its palaces, its tombs, and its monolithes. I descended the Nile, stopping at every place which contained any monuments worthy of my curiosity. I ascended one of the Pyramids. I passed several days in Cairo, and set out for Alexandria, where I embarked anew, to pass over the small space of sea which separated me from Europe.
I have sometimes wished to compare the grandest of human productions with the works of the Creator; the comparison is by no means favourable to the former, for all those useless ornaments are nothing but lasting proofs of pride, and of the fanaticism of a few men, who were obeyed by a people in slavery. I also saw all that remained of the traces of destruction committed by two of the greatest conquerors of the world: the first was but a haughty despot, causing cohorts of slaves to act as he pleased, and carrying the sword and destruction amongst peaceful people, to profane their tombs, to follow up useless conquests,—history afterwards shows him dying of an orgie; and the other, alas! was enchained to a rock.
From the summit of one of the Pyramids, in religious abstraction, I had contemplated the majestic Nile, which glides serpent-like through a vast plain, bordered by the Desert and arid mountains. Looking, then, below me, I could with difficulty descry some of my travelling companions, who were gazing at the Sphinx, and who appeared like little spots on the sand. And I then exclaimed: “It is not these useless monuments that we ought to admire, but rather this magnificent river, which, in obedience to the laws of all-powerful wisdom, overflows every year, at a fixed period, its limits, and spreads itself, like a vast sea, to water and to vivify these immense plains, which are afterwards covered with rich harvests. If this immutable and beneficent order of Nature did not endure, all these fertile districts would be but a desert waste, where no living creature could exist.”
These reflections took their origin, without doubt, from my having spent almost all my life amidst those grand creations of Nature, from which man continually derives sentiments that elevate him to the Supreme Being. I had studied that Nature—in all her details, her beneficence, and her magnificence—too attentively to allow the productions of man’s genius to make upon me the impression which I thought might be expected, when I first formed the wish to see the monuments of Egypt; and, while sailing for Europe, I already anticipated the feeling that a short sojourn in the midst of civilisation would cause me to regret my ancient freedom, my mountains, and my solitudes in the Philippine Islands.
On arriving at Malta I was for eighteen days locked up in Fort Manuel, and then passed the quarantine. I there received news of my family. My mother and sisters wrote to me that they were in the enjoyment of excellent health, and were awaiting with impatience my coming to them. After the quarantine was over, I stopped nearly a week in the city, while waiting for a steamer that was going to France. I embraced the opportunity of seeing every curiosity in the island. I then resumed my voyage to my native land, and the following week I recognised the arid rocks of Provence and France, from which I had been absent for twenty years.