French Classics Part 26

Paul and Virginia being now about twelve years of age, Virginia goes, accompanied by Paul, to restore to the master a runaway female slave to whom he had been cruel, and to intercede with him on the sufferer's behalf. She has accomplished her purpose, and the two have set out to return. They lose their way. This is the state of the case at the point at which our first extract begins, as follows:

"G.o.d will have pity on us," replied Virginia; "he listens to the voice of the little birds which ask him for food." She had scarcely uttered these words when they heard the noise of water falling from a neighboring rock. They hastened to it, and, after having quenched their thirst at this spring clearer than crystal, they gathered and ate a few cresses which grew on its banks. As they were looking around them to find some more substantial nourishment, Virginia descried a young palm-tree among the trees of the wood. The cabbage which is found at the top of this tree, inclosed within its leaves, is an excellent food; but although its stalk is not thicker than a man's leg it was more than sixty feet high. The wood of this tree is indeed composed only of a collection of filaments; but its internal bark is so hard that it blunts the sharpest hatchets, and Paul had not even a knife. He thought of setting fire to this palm-tree at its foot.

Another difficulty--he had no steel to strike fire with, and besides, in this island so covered with rocks, I do not believe it would be possible to find a single flint. Necessity inspires industry, and often the most useful inventions have come from men reduced to extremity. Paul resolved to light a fire after the manner of the negroes. With the sharp end of a stone he made a small hole in the branch of a tree that was very dry, which he placed under his feet; he then with the edge of the stone made a point to another branch equally dry, but of a different kind of wood. He next placed the piece of pointed wood in the small hole of the branch which was under his feet, and turning it rapidly round in his hands, as one turns a mill to froth chocolate, he in a few moments perceived smoke and sparks arise from the point of contact. He collected together dry herbs and other branches of trees, and set fire to the foot of the palm-tree, which soon afterward fell with a violent noise. The fire served him also in stripping the cabbage of the long woody and p.r.i.c.kly leaves which enclosed it. Virginia and he ate a part of this cabbage raw, and the rest cooked in the ashes, and they found them equally agreeable to the taste.... After their meal ... an hour of walking brought them to the banks of a large river, which barred their way.... The noise of its waters terrified Virginia; she dared not try to ford it. Paul accordingly took Virginia on his back, and pa.s.sed thus laden over the slippery rocks of the river, regardless of the turbulence of the waters. "Fear not," said he to her; "I feel myself very strong with you." ... When Paul had pa.s.sed over, and was on the bank, he wished to continue his journey laden with his sister, flattering himself that he could ascend in that manner the mountain of the Three Peaks, which he saw before him at the distance of half a league; but his strength soon began to fail, and he was obliged to set her on the ground and to throw himself down beside her.... Virginia plucked from an old tree, which hung over the banks of the river, some long leaves of hart's tongue which hung down from its trunk. She made of these a kind of buskins with which she bound her feet, which the stones of the way had caused to bleed, for in her hurry to do good she had forgotten to put on her shoes. Feeling herself relieved by the freshness of the leaves she broke off a branch of bamboo and began to walk, leaning with one hand on the cane and with the other on her brother.

In this manner they walked on slowly through the woods; but the height of the trees and the thickness of their foliage made them soon lose sight of the mountain of the Three Peaks, by which they had directed themselves, and even of the sun, which was already setting. After some time they quitted, without perceiving it, the beaten path which they had till then followed, and found themselves in a labyrinth of trees, shrubs, and rocks, which had no farther outlet. Paul made Virginia sit down, and ran almost distracted in search of a path out of this thick wood; but he wearied himself in vain. He climbed to the top of a lofty tree, to discover at least the mountain of the Three Peaks, but he could perceive nothing around him but tops of trees, some of which were illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun. Already the shadow of the mountains covered the forests in the valleys; the wind was going down, as is usual at sunset; a profound silence reigned in these solitudes, and no noise was heard but the cry of the stags who came to seek repose in these unfrequented recesses. Paul, in the hope that some hunter might hear him, cried out as loud as he could: "Come! Come! and help Virginia!" But only the echoes of the forest answered to his voice and repeated several times successively: "Virginia! Virginia!"

Paul now descended from the tree, overcome with fatigue and disappointment; ... he began to weep. Virginia said to him: "Do not weep, my dear, unless you wish to overwhelm me with grief.... O! I have been very imprudent." And she began to shed tears. Nevertheless, she said to Paul, "Let us pray to G.o.d, my brother, and he will have pity on us." Scarcely had they finished their prayer when they heard the barking of a dog.... "I believe," said Virginia, "it is Fidele, our house-dog."

Of course all turned out happily. A rescue party had come in search of the estray, and they were soon brought with rejoicing home.

Such as the foregoing pa.s.sage will have served to show is the charm of unfallen simplicity and innocence represented by St. Pierre to have been cast, forming as if an Eden in the wilderness, about these happy children of nature on whom society had had no chance to exercise its baneful power. True, they suffered, though in Eden. True, others sinned, as well as suffered, about them, for there was slavery and there was cruelty; but that was in the wilderness outside; in Eden they did not sin. It was all Rousseauism in experiment and reduced to absurdity. By Rousseauism we indicate the doctrinal dream of that dreamer; by no means the actual waking practice of the man that dreamed.

It may seem a strange marring of the idea of a sufficiency in nature, let nature but be unhindered by society, to renew the world in the purity of paradise, that the end of the idyll of Paul and Virginia should have come about through an effort on the part of Virginia's mother, made quite in the spirit of the present artificial order of things, to secure a bequest from an aunt of hers in France, whom the niece had offended by marrying as she did; but so it was. Virginia undertakes the necessary voyage, and, as we have already said, perishes by shipwreck on the coast of Mauritius in returning. The heart-rending agony of the final catastrophe we have no s.p.a.ce to exhibit. The author seems to hint that Virginia might have been saved, could she have brought herself to a.s.sent to the desire of an entreating honest stalwart seaman that she should disembarra.s.s her person of her clothes.

It is almost the step taken from the sublime to the ridiculous for the author to make his heroine perish thus as a martyr to her own invincible modesty.

The bereaved mother has visions of her departed daughter's accomplished felicity in the world unseen. These she describes to the neighbor, who, a venerable old man, tells the traveler the tale. Now for the final extract from the text of the book:

"O my worthy neighbor!" said she [Paul's mother] to me [the old man who tells the whole story]: "I thought last night I beheld Virginia clothed in white, in the midst of groves and delicious gardens. She said to me: 'I enjoy the most desirable happiness.' Then she approached Paul with a smiling air and bore him away with her. As I endeavored to retain my son I felt that I myself was quitting the earth, and that I was following him with inexpressible pleasure. I then wished to bid my friend farewell, when I perceived her following us with Mary and Domingo. [These are negro slaves of the two mothers.]

But what seems still more strange is, that Madame de la Tour [Virginia's mother] had the same night a dream attended with similar circ.u.mstances."

I replied to her, "My friend, I believe that nothing happens in the world without the permission of G.o.d. Dreams do sometimes foretell the truth."

Madame de la Tour related to me that the same night she had also had a dream entirely similar. I had never observed in these two ladies the least propensity to superst.i.tion; I was therefore struck with the resemblance of their dreams, and I had no doubt but that they would be soon realized. This opinion, that truth sometimes presents itself to us during our sleep, is generally spread among all the nations of the earth. The most ill.u.s.trious men of antiquity have entertained it, amongst others, Alexander, Caesar, the Scipios, the two Catos, and Brutus, who were by no means inclined to superst.i.tion. The Old and the New Testament supply us with a variety of examples of dreams that have been realized....

But whether this opinion concerning dreams be true or not, those of my unfortunate friends were speedily realized. Paul died two months after the death of his dear Virginia, whose name he incessantly p.r.o.nounced.

Margaret [Paul's mother] beheld her end approach a week after that of her son with a joy which virtue only can feel. She bade Madame de la Tour the most tender farewell, "in the hope," she said, "of a sweet and eternal reunion. Death is the greatest of all blessings," added she; "we ought to desire it. If life be a punishment we ought to wish for its end; if it be a trial, we should wish it short."

The governor took care of Domingo and Mary, who were no longer able to labor, and who did not long survive their mistresses. As for poor Fidele, he pined away about the same time as he lost his master.

I conducted Madame de la Tour to my house. She bore up under these heavy afflictions with an incredible fort.i.tude of mind. She had comforted Paul and Margaret up to their last moments, as if she had only their misfortune to support. When she no longer beheld them, she spoke of them every day as of beloved friends who were in the neighborhood. She survived them, however, but a month....

The body of Paul was placed by the side of Virginia, at the foot of the same bamboos; and near the same spot the remains of their tender mothers and their faithful servants were laid. No marble was raised over their humble turf, no inscription engraved to celebrate their virtues; but their memory remains indelible in the hearts of those whom they have a.s.sisted.

If we have treated somewhat lightly this romance of sentimentalism and of naturalism it is because of the taint of ungenuineness--that is, of unreality more or less conscious on the author's part--that we seem to ourselves to discover in its pages. But the masterpiece of Bernardin de St. Pierre is after all a serious literary fact. For instance, if "Paul and Virginia" had never been written it is doubtful if we should ever have had that series of romantico-realistic little pieces of fiction from the pen of George Sand, out of one of which we shall presently exemplify this woman of genius to our readers. A production in literature is to be judged not only by its own inherent quality, but also, perhaps not less by its entail of influence.

"Paul and Virginia," in becoming a school-book for the learning of French, may be said to have bought increase of celebrity at the price of some diminution in fame. In our own opinion, however, which, after all that we have said, hardly needs to be thus expressly stated, the book still remains quite as famous as its intrinsic merits ent.i.tle it to be.

Its chief security of renown in the future lies, and will continue more and more to lie, in the striking fact of its renown in the past.

We formally part with Rousseau and with his first literary foster-child.

But we shall trace their features still, again and again, persisting in authors to follow who could not escape a tell-tale impress, open to all to see, stamped from that singularly fecund, and singularly potent, literary paternity.

XVIII.

THE ENCYCLOPaeDISTS.

A cenotaph is a monument erected to the memory of one dead, but not marking the spot in which his remains rest. The present chapter is a cenotaph to the French Encyclopaedists. It is in the nature of a memorial of their literary work, but it will be found to contain no specimen extracts from their writings.

Everybody has heard of the Encyclopaedists of France. Who are they? They are a group of men who, during the eighteenth century, a.s.sociated themselves together for the production of a great work to be the repository of all human knowledge,--in one word, of an encyclopaedia. The project was a laudable one; and the motive to it was laudable--in part.

For there was mixture of motive in the case. In part, the motive was simple desire to advance the cause of human enlightenment; in part, however, the motive was desire to undermine Christianity. This latter end the encyclopaedist collaborators may have thought to be an indispensable means subsidiary to the former end. They probably did think so--with such imperfect sincerity as is possible to those who set themselves, consciously or unconsciously, against G.o.d. The fact is, that the Encyclopaedists came at length to be nearly as much occupied in extinguishing Christianity as in promoting public enlightenment. They went about this their task of destroying in a way as effective as has ever been devised for accomplishing a similar work. They gave a vicious turn of insinuation against Christianity to as many articles as possible. In the most unexpected places, throughout the entire work, pitfalls were laid of anti-Christian implication, awaiting the unwary feet of the explorer of its pages. You were nowhere sure of your ground.

The world has never before seen, it has never seen since, an example of propagandism altogether so adroit and so alert. It is not too much to say further that history can supply few instances of propagandism so successful. The Encyclopaedists might almost be said to have given the human mind a fresh start and a new orbit. The fresh start is, perhaps, spent; the new orbit has at length, to a great extent, returned upon the old; but it holds true, nevertheless, that the Encyclopaedists of France were for a time, and that not a short time, a prodigious force of impulsion and direction to the Occidental mind. It ought to be added that the aim of the Encyclopaedists was political also, not less than religious. In truth, religion and politics, Church and State, in their day, and in France, were much the same thing. The "Encyclopaedia" was as revolutionary in politics as it was atheistic in religion.

The leader in this movement of insurrectionary thought was Denis DIDEROT. Diderot (1713-1784) was born to be an encyclopaedist, and a captain of encyclopaedists. Force inexhaustible, and inexhaustible willingness to give out force; unappeasable curiosity to know; irresistible impulse to impart knowledge; versatile capacity to do every thing, carried to the verge, if not carried beyond the verge, of incapacity to do anything thoroughly well; quenchless zeal and quenchless hope; levity enough of temper to keep its subject free from those depressions of spirit and those cares of conscience which weigh and wear on the overearnest man; abundant physical health--gifts such as these made up the manifold equipment of Diderot for rowing and steering the gigantic enterprise of the "Encyclopaedia" triumphantly to the port of final completion, through many and many a zone of stormy adverse wind and sea, traversed on the way. Diderot produced no signal independent and original work of his own; probably he could not have produced such a work. On the other hand, it is simply just to say that hardly anybody but Diderot could have achieved the "Encyclopaedia." That, indeed, may be considered an achievement not more to the glory than to the shame of its author; but whatever its true moral character, in whatever proportion shameful or glorious, it is inalienably and peculiarly Diderot's achievement--at least in this sense, that without Diderot the "Encyclopaedia" would never have been achieved.

We have already, in discussing Voltaire, adverted sufficiently to Mr.

John Morley's volumes in honor of Diderot and his compeers. Diderot is therein ably presented in the best possible light to the reader; and we are bound to say that, despite Mr. Morley's friendly endeavors, Diderot therein appears very ill. He married a young woman whose simple and touching self-sacrifice on her husband's behalf he presently requited by giving himself away, body and soul, to a rival. In his writings he is so easily insincere that not unfrequently it is a problem, even for his biographer, to decide when he is expressing his sentiments truly and when not, insomuch that, once and again, Mr. Morley himself is obliged to say, "This is probably hypocritical on Diderot's part," or something to that effect. As for filthy communication out of his mouth and from his pen--not, of course, habitual, but occasional--the subject will not bear more than this mention. These be thy G.o.ds, O Atheism! one, in reading Mr. Morley on Diderot, is tempted again and again to exclaim. To offset such lowness of character in the man it must in justice be added that Diderot was, notwithstanding, of a generous, uncalculating turn of mind, not grudging, especially in intellectual relations, to give of his best to others, expecting nothing again. Diderot, too, as well as Voltaire, had his royal or imperial friends, in the notorious Empress Catherine of Russia, and in King Stanislaus of Poland. He visited Catherine once in her capital, and was there munificently entertained by her. She was regally pleased to humor this gentleman of France, permitting him to bring down his fist in gesture violently on the redoubtable royal knee, according to a pleasant way Diderot had of emphasizing a point in familiar conversation. His truest claim to praise for intellectual superiority is, perhaps, that he was a prolific begetter of wit in other men.

D'ALEMBERT (Jean le Rond, 1717-1783) was an eminent mathematician. He wrote especially, though not at first exclusively, on mathematical subjects for the "Encyclopaedia." He was, indeed, at the outset, published as mathematical editor of the work. His European reputation in science made his name a tower of strength to the "Encyclopaedia,"--even after he ceased to be an editorial coadjutor in the enterprise. For there came a time when D'Alembert abdicated responsibility as editor and left the undertaking to fall heavily on the single shoulder, Atlantean shoulder it proved to be, of Diderot. The celebrated "Preliminary Discourse," prefixed to the "Encyclopaedia," proceeded from the hand of D'Alembert. This has always been esteemed a masterpiece of comprehensive grasp and lucid exposition. A less creditable contribution of D'Alembert's to the "Encyclopaedia" was his article on "Geneva," in the course of which, at the instance of Voltaire, who wanted a chance to have his plays represented in that city, he went out of his way to recommend to the Genevans that they establish for themselves a theater.

This brought out Rousseau in an eloquent harangue against the theater as exerting influence to debauch public morals. D'Alembert, in the contest, did not carry off the honors of the day. D'Alembert's "eloges," so called, a series of characterizations and appreciations written by the author in his old age, of members of the French Academy, enjoy deserved reputation for sagacious intellectual estimate, and for clear, though not supremely elegant, style of composition.

Diderot and D'Alembert are the only men whose names appear on the t.i.tle-page of the "Encyclopaedia;" but Voltaire, Rousseau, Turgot, Helvetius, Duclos, Condillac, Buffon, Grimm, Holbach, with many besides whom we must not stay even to mention, contributed to the work.

The influence of the "Encyclopaedia," great during its day, is by no means yet exhausted. But it is an influence indirectly exerted, for the "Encyclopaedia" itself has long been an obsolete work.

There is a legal maxim that the laws are silent when a state of war exists. Certainly, amid the madness of a revolution such as, during the closing years of the eighteenth century, the influence of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists, with Beaumarchais, reacting against the acc.u.mulated political and ecclesiastical oppressions of ages, precipitated upon France, it might safely be a.s.sumed that letters would be silent. But the nation meantime was portentously preparing material for a literature which many wondering centuries to follow would occupy themselves with writing.

XIX.

MADAME DE STAEL.

1766-1817.

In Madame de Stael we encounter a truly redoubtable figure in literature.

But Madame de Stael in her day seemed more than a writer, more even than a writer of what the Germans would call world-importance; she was, or she seemed, a prodigious living personal force. For her tongue was not less formidable than her pen. In truth, the fame of Madame de Stael is due to the twofold power which, during her life-time, she exercised, and exercised in very uncertain proportions, first perhaps as a talker and second as a writer. She is generally allowed, and that upon the most incontestable authority, to have been one of the most brilliant and most effective talkers in the history of the human race.

This power in Madame de Stael of personal impression you are not free to ascribe to any charm that she owned of physical beauty; for Madame de Stael was not a beautiful woman. By her friend, Madame Recamier, that charm was exercised to the full, and that charm Madame de Stael, did not despise. So far from it, she is said once (thus at least the present writer seems to remember, but he has been unable to verify his impression) pa.s.sionately to have exclaimed that she would give all her genius for one evening of Madame Recamier's beauty. This was not the vanity on her part of wish to be admired. It was the pathos of longing to be loved. "Never, never," she cried out in anguish, "I shall never be loved as I love." She was true woman after all; and it would be inexpiable wrong against her not to say this also, and say it with emphasis, however sharply we may be just in p.r.o.nouncing the masculine strength of her character. The contrast was so obvious between Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier in point of mere personal charm that, in a moment evil for him, a gentleman once seated between them permitted himself the awkwardness of saying, in ill-advised intention of compliment to both, but with most unhappy chief effect to the contrary, alike on this side and on that, "How fortunate! I sit between Wit and Beauty." "Yes, and without possessing either the one or the other,"

retorted Wit, amply avenging herself for being reminded that she was not also Beauty. Madame de Stael had certainly justified one half of the gentleman's compliment; and Madame Recamier, with her serene ineffable charm, did not need to speak in order to justify the other.

It was, then, by the pure dry light of her intellect and her wit that Madame de Stael dazzled so in conversation--dazzled so, and so attracted. Wherever she was, there was the center. She made a _salon_ anywhere, by simply being there. And Madame de Stael's _salon_ was felt by the ruler of Europe to be a formidable political power implacably hostile to himself. "Somehow," said Napoleon, "I observe that, whatever is talked about at Madame de Stael's, those who go there come away thinking less favorably of me." It seems to have been in part because she said nothing, and would say nothing, of Napoleon in her "Germany,"

that he finally suppressed that book. "You will speak ill of me when you get back to your academy," said to Plato the tyrant of Syracuse. "In the academy we shall not have time to speak of you at all," was the philosopher's reply.

Madame de Stael was singularly fortunate in heredity on both sides of her parentage. Her father was an eminent banker and minister of finance, who enjoyed the n.o.blest and clearest renown as a man both of talent and of character. Her mother was that beautiful and gifted daughter of a Swiss pastor whom the historian Gibbon once thought he loved, but whom he dutifully gave up at the will of his father. "I sighed as a lover and obeyed as a son," Gibbon says in his "Autobiography." This was after years had pa.s.sed with him--"years that bring the philosophic mind!" The obese but famous English historian, still a bachelor, was a frequent guest at the house of M. Necker, where he had the opportunity gallantly to admire the brilliant daughter of the woman who might have been his wife.

We have said enough to show that, with the exception of personal beauty, Madame de Stael enjoyed every external advantage that could help to give her a shining career. Her wealth was something more than a mere accessory advantage; she needed it to sustain her in the waste of money made necessary by her wanderings through Europe to escape the tyrannous hand of Napoleon. Her exile was agony to her, for she loved France, and she loved Paris with inextinguishable affection. It is impossible to deny to the obstinacy that refused to burn even a pinch of incense to the G.o.d of her nation's idolatry, for the sake of permission to return to every thing that she loved--it is impossible, we say, to deny to this obstinacy in Madame de Stael the t.i.tle of a true and heroic virtue.

How costly-brave was the att.i.tude that Madame de Stael steadfastly kept toward Napoleon, during the fifteen years of his unparalleled sway, may be guessed from the account that she gives of the unnerving, the prostrating effect upon her of the presence, the character, and the genius of that extraordinary man. In her "Reflections on the French Revolution" she has the following pa.s.sage, almost equally striking whether taken as a description or as a confession:

Far from gaining re-a.s.surance in meeting Buonaparte oftener, he intimidated me daily more and more. I confusedly felt that no emotion of the heart could possibly take effect upon him. He looks upon a human being as a fact or as a thing, but not as a fellow-creature. He does not hate any more than he loves; there is nothing for him but himself; all other beings are so many ciphers. The force of his will lies in the imperturbable calculation of his selfishness.... His successes are as much to be credited to the qualities which he lacks as to the talents which he possesses. Neither pity, nor attraction, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea whatsoever, could make him swerve from the main path he had chosen. Every time I heard him talk I was struck with his superiority; this, however, had no resemblance to the superiority of men trained and cultivated by study or by society, a cla.s.s of which England and France can offer examples. But his courses of remark indicated a tact for seizing upon circ.u.mstances like that which the hunter has for seizing upon his prey. Sometimes he recounted the political and military incidents of his life in a manner to interest greatly; he had even, in narrations that admitted gayety, a trace of Italian imagination. Still, nothing could get the better of my revulsion for what I perceived in him. I felt, in his soul, a sword, cold and cutting, that froze while it wounded; I felt, in his mind, a fundamental irony from which nothing great, nothing beautiful, not his own glory even, could escape; for he despised the nation whose suffrages he sought; and no single spark of enthusiasm mixed with his wish to astonish mankind.

It was during the interval between the return of Buonaparte (from Italy), and his setting out for Egypt toward the end of 1787, that I several times saw him in Paris; and never could I overcome the difficulty which I experienced in breathing in his presence. I was one day seated at table between him and the Abbe Sieyes; singular situation, could I have foreseen the future! [Sieyes, two years later, became one in a triumvirate of "consuls," of whom Napoleon was another.] I scrutinized carefully the face of Napoleon; but every time he detected my observing glances he had the art to rob his eyes of all expression, as if they were changed to marble. His countenance was then immobile, save a vague smile that he brought upon his lips at a venture, in order to throw out any one who might wish to mark the external signs of his thought.