All is changed, my dear friend; let us suffer the change without a murmur.  It was not well for us that we should rejoin each other.

For it was an illusion that my love for you was cured; now, in the presence of death, I know that I still love you.  I avow this without shame, for I have done my duty.  My virtue is without stain, my love without remorse.

Come back to Clarens; train my children, comfort their noble father, lead him into the light of Christian faith.  Claire, like yourself, is about to lose the half of her life; let each of you preserve the other half by a union that in these latter days I have often wished to bring about.

Adieu, sweet friend, adieu!

* * * * *

BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE

Paul and Virginia

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre was born at Havre on January 19, 1737.  Like many boys that are natives of seaports, he was anxious to become a sailor; but a single voyage cured him of his desire for a seafaring life, although not of his love for travel.  For some years afterwards he was a rolling stone, sometimes soldier and sometimes engineer, visiting one European country after another.  In 1771 he obtained a government appointment in Mauritius, a spot which was the subject of his first book (see TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE, Vol.  XIX), and which was afterwards made the scene of “Paul and Virginia.”  In his “Nature Studies,” 1783, he showed an enthusiasm for nature that contrasted vividly with the artificiality of most eighteenth-century writers; but his fame was not established until he had set all the ladies of France weeping with his “Paul and Virginia,” perhaps the most sentimental book ever written.  It was published in 1787, and although it does not cause in modern readers the tearful raptures that it provoked on its first appearance, its fame has survived as the most notable work of a romantic and nature-loving sentimentalist with remarkable powers of narration.  Saint Pierre died on January 21, 1814.

I.—­The Home Among the Rocks

On the eastern declivity of the mountain which rises behind Port Louis, in the Isle of France, are still to be seen, on a spot of ground formerly cultivated, the ruins of two little cottages.  They are situated almost in the midst of a basin formed by enormous rocks, with only one opening, from which you may look upon Port Louis and the sea.

I took pleasure in retiring to this place, where one can at once enjoy an unbounded prospect and profound solitude.  One day, as I was sitting near the cottages, an elderly man approached me.  His hair was completely white, his aspect simple and majestic.  I saluted him, and he sat down beside me.

“Can you inform me, father,” I asked, “to whom these two cottages belonged?”

“My son,” replied he, “these ruins were inhabited by two families, which there found the means of true happiness.  But who will deign to take an interest in the history, however affecting, of a few obscure individuals?”