Paul and Virginia | Page 8

should accompany old age. His day of storms and tempests was closed by an evening of repose and beauty.
Amid many other blessings, the elasticity of his mind was preserved to the last. He died at Eragny sur l'Oise, on the 21st of January, 1814. The stirring events which then occupied France, or rather the whole world, caused his death to be little noticed at the time. The Academy did not, however, neglect to give him the honour due to its members. Mons. Parseval Grand Maison pronounced a deserved eulogium on his talents, and Mons. Aignan, also, the customary tribute, taking his seat as his successor.
Having himself contracted the habit of confiding his griefs and sorrows to the public, the sanctuary of his private life was open alike to the discussion of friends and enemies. The biographer, who wishes to be exact, and yet set down nought in malice, is forced to the contemplation of his errors. The secret of many of these, as well as of his miseries, seems revealed by himself in this sentence: "I experience more pain from a single thorn, than pleasure from a thousand roses." And elsewhere, "The best society seems to me bad, if I find in it one troublesome, wicked, slanderous, envious, or perfidious person." Now, taking into consideration that St. Pierre sometimes imagined persons who were really good, to be deserving of these strong and very contumacious epithets, it would have been difficult indeed to find a society in which he could have been happy. He was, therefore, wise, in seeking retirement, and indulging in solitude. His mistakes,--for they were mistakes,--arose from a too quick perception of evil, united to an exquisite and diffuse sensibility. When he felt wounded by a thorn, he forgot the beauty and perfume of the rose to which it belonged, and from which perhaps it could not be separated. And he was exposed (as often happens) to the very description of trials that were least in harmony with his defects. Few dispositions could have run a career like his, and have remained unscathed. But one less tender than his own would have been less soured by it. For many years, he bore about with him the consciousness of unacknowledged talent. The world cannot be blamed for not appreciating that which had never been revealed. But we know not what the jostling and elbowing of that world, in the meantime, may have been to him--how often he may have felt himself unworthily treated--or how far that treatment may have preyed upon and corroded his heart. Who shall say that with this consciousness there did not mingle a quick and instinctive perception of the hidden motives of action,--that he did not sometimes detect, where others might have been blind, the under-shuffling of the hands, in the by-play of the world?
Through all his writings, and throughout his correspondence, there are beautiful proofs of the tenderness of his feelings,--the most essential quality, perhaps, in any writer. It is at least, one that if not possessed, can never be attained. The familiarity of his imagination with natural objects, when he was living far removed from them, is remarkable, and often affecting.
"I have arranged," he says to Mr. Henin, his friend and patron, "very interesting materials, but it is only with the light of Heaven over me that I can recover my strength. Obtain for me a /rabbit's hole/, in which I may pass the summer in the country." And again, "With the /first violet/, I shall come to see you." It is soothing to find, in passages like these, such pleasing and convincing evidence that
"Nature never did betray, The heart that loved her."
In the noise of a great city, in the midst of annoyances of many kinds these images, impressed with quietness and beauty, came back to the mind of St. Pierre, to cheer and animate him.
In alluding to his miseries, it is but fair to quote a passage from his "Voyage," which reveals his fond remembrance of his native land. "I should ever prefer my own country to every other," he says, "not because it was more beautiful, but because I was brought up in it. Happy he, who sees again the places where all was loved, and all was lovely!--the meadows in which he played, and the orchard that he robbed!"
He returned to this country, so fondly loved and deeply cherished in absence, to experience only trouble and difficulty. Away from it, he had yearned to behold it,--to fold it, as it were, once more to his bosom. He returned to feel as if neglected by it, and all his rapturous emotions were changed to bitterness and gall. His hopes had proved delusions--his expectations, mockeries. Oh! who but must look with charity and mercy on all discontent and irritation consequent on