"So, then," thought the philosopher, as he re-entered his cottage, "there still exist some few minds free from the consuming toils of ambition. Who would ever have expected to find a lover of nature with a republican epaulet? There is a simplicity in this youth most attractive; how modestly did he speak of himself; how bitterly lament the horrors of war; and his enjoyment of this lovely, dewy morning, was that of a sage no less than of a poet. Doubtless the manuscript is some learned treatise on the art of war—the subject not his choice but the necessity of his position. The art of war!—art indeed—the art of killing the arts!"
Bernardin de Saint Pierre was mistaken. The manuscript was a pastoral romance—conceive his delight—A Pastoral Romance! "Yes!" he said, "the noble mind must let fly the falcon imagination to cater for it. It can not feed on the garbage around."
Day after day now elapsed without bringing his young visitor; but some months after, Bernardin, seated at a table placed under the shade of trees of his own planting, and covered with flowers gathered to serve as models for his word-paintings, was enjoying the soft evening breeze, when the visit of an officer was announced; and to his great surprise, instead of him whom he was eagerly advancing to welcome, he beheld a stranger. He had, indeed, the same black hair falling from his temples, the same dark eyes, the same olive hue of the man of the sun and the Mediterranean. But he saw not the same person; his new visitor was at least ten years older than the first.
"I am the elder brother, sir, of an officer who, some months since, did himself the honor of calling upon you."
"His visit still lives in my memory as one most pleasant. He confided to me a manuscript which I would be glad to take this opportunity of returning, with my assurances of entire sympathy in his love of nature, and still more in his noble indignation against tyrants, his eloquent invectives against ambition. Tell him, too, from me, how much I admire his style; its rich imagery—its—"
"I must not let you go on, sir, for such praise has already rendered it difficult to avow myself the author of the book. I had not courage to submit it to you myself, but my younger and more adventurous brother gladly availed himself of it as a plea for his intrusion."
After some courteous words interchanged between the new visitor and Bernardin, the latter pointed to the flowers and said, "I was at that moment thinking of your brother; he had told me of the names given by loving hearts in Italy to the stars, and I was reflecting that our associations with flowers were still trammeled by such a rugged nomenclature; it is enough to make the science of botany detestable."
"Ah, sir, you will teach all to love it; already has your Etudes de la Nature made it popular throughout Europe. I myself had formed a floral dial at a villa at Florence where my regiment was quartered; every hour of the night and of the day was marked by the opening of different flowers. I am passionately fond of them, and can well understand the Dutchman lavishing a fortune upon a tulip, and spending a life in giving it some new variety of tint."
"What a simple-minded family!" thought Bernardin. "One brother worships the starry splendor of the heavens, and the other luxuriates in flowers, and spends his idle garrison hours in watching them as they bud forth at every hour of the day; and these two young men are soldiers! War has not hardened their hearts, nor conquest made them despise simple pleasures." And now, Saint Pierre, leaning on his new friend, proceeded to show him his flowers, "which," he said, "though not like the lovely products of the fertile Italy you have conquered, yet, as my own planting are not without their fragrance for the old man;" and as they walked along, he repeated to himself rather than to his companion,
"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari"