Paul and Virginia from the French of J.B.H. de Saint Pierre · Chapter 9Paul and Virginia. (7)
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
"This funeral solemnity had been ordered by the administration of the country, who were desirous of rendering honours to the virtue of Virginia. But when the progression arrived at the foot of this mountain, at the sight of those cottages, of which she had long been the ornament and happiness, and which her loss now filled with despair, the funeral pomp was interrupted, the hymns and anthems ceased, and the plain resounded with sighs and lamentations. Companies of young girls ran from the neighbouring plantations to touch the coffin of Virginia with their scarfs, chaplets, and crowns of flowers, invoking her as a saint. Mothers asked of heaven a child like Virginia; lovers, a heart as faithful; the poor, as tender a friend; and the slaves, as kind a mistress.
"When the procession had reached the place of interment, the negresses of Madagascar, and the caffres of Mosambiac, placed baskets of fruit around the corpse, and hung pieces of stuff upon the neighbouring trees, according to the custom of their country. The Indians of Bengal, and of the coast of Malabar, brought cages filled with birds, which they set at liberty upon her coffin. Thus did the loss of this amiable object affect the natives of different countries, and thus was the ritual of various religions breathed over the tomb of unfortunate virtue.
"She was interred near the church of the Shaddock Grove, upon the western side, at the foot of a copse of bamboos, where, in coming from mass with her mother and Margaret, she loved to repose herself, seated by him whom she called her brother.
"On his return from the funeral solemnity, Monsieur de la Bourdonnais came hither, followed by part of his numerous train. He offered Madame de la Tour and her friend all the assistance which it was in his power to bestow. After expressing his indignation at the conduct of her unnatural aunt, he advanced to Paul, and said every thing which he thought most likely to soothe and console him. 'Heaven is my witness,' said he, 'that I wished to ensure your happiness, and that of your family. My dear friend, you must go to France: I will obtain a commission for you, and during your absence will take the same care of your mother as if she were my own.' He then offered him his hand; but Paul drew away, and turned his head, unable to bear his sight.
"I remained at the plantation of my unfortunate friends, that I might render to them and Paul those offices of friendship which soften, though they cannot cure, calamity. At the end of three weeks Paul was able to walk, yet his mind seemed to droop in proportion as his frame gathered strength. He was insensible to every thing; his look was vacant; and when spoken to, he made no reply. Madame de la Tour, who was dying, said to him often, 'My son, while I look at you, I think I see Virginia.' At the name of Virginia he shuddered, and hastened from her, notwithstanding the entreaties of his mother, who called him back to her friend. He used to wander into the garden, and seat himself at the foot of Virginia's cocoa tree, with his eyes fixed upon the fountain. The surgeon to the governor, who had shown the most humane attention to Paul, and the whole family, told us that, in order to cure that deep melancholy which had taken possession of his mind, we must allow him to do whatever he pleased, without contradiction, as the only means of conquering his inflexible silence.
"I resolved to follow this advice. The first use which Paul made of his returning strength was to absent himself from the plantation. Being determined not to lose sight of him, I set out immediately, and desired Domingo to take some provisions and accompany us. Paul's strength and spirits seemed renewed as he descended the mountain. He took the road of the Shaddock Grove; and when he was near the church, in the Alley of Bamboos, he walked directly to the spot where he saw some new-laid earth, and there kneeling down, and raising up his eyes to heaven, he offered up a long prayer, which appeared to me a symptom of returning reason; since this mark of confidence in the Supreme Being showed that his mind began to resume its natural functions. Domingo and I followed his example, fell upon our knees, and mingled our prayers with his. When he arose, he bent his way, paying little attention to us, towards the northern part of the island. As we knew that he was not only ignorant of the spot where the body of Virginia was laid, but even whether it had been snatched from the waves, I asked him why he had offered up his prayer at the foot of those bamboos. He answered, 'We have been there so often!' He continued his course until we reached the borders of the forest, when night came on. I prevailed with him to take some nourishment; and we slept upon the grass, at the foot of a tree. The next day I thought he seemed disposed to trace back his steps; for, after having gazed a considerable time upon the church of the Shaddock Grove with its avenues of bamboo stretching along the plain, he made a motion as if he would return; but, suddenly plunging into the forest, he directed his course to the north. I judged what was his design, from which I endeavoured to dissuade him in vain. At noon he arrived at that part of the island called the Gold Dust. He rushed to the seashore, opposite to the spot where the Saint Geran perished. At the sight of the Isle of Amber and its channel, then smooth as a mirror, he cried, 'Virginia! Oh, my dear Virginia!' and fell senseless. Domingo and myself carried him into the woods, where we recovered him with some difficulty. He made an effort to return to the seashore; but, having conjured him not to renew his own anguish and ours by those cruel remembrances, he took another direction. During eight days he sought every spot where he had once wandered with the companion of his childhood. He traced the path by which she had gone to intercede for the slave of the Black River. He gazed again upon the banks of the Three Peaks, where she had reposed herself when unable to walk further, and upon that part of the wood where they lost their way. All those haunts, which recalled the inquietudes, the sports, the repasts, the benevolence of her he loved, the river of the Sloping Mountain, my house, the neighbouring cascade, the papaw tree she had planted, the mossy downs where she loved to run, the openings of the forest where she used to sing, called forth successively the tears of hopeless passion; and those very echoes which had so often resounded their mutual shouts of joy, now only repeated those accents of despair, 'Virginia! Oh, my dear Virginia!'
"While he led this savage and wandering life, his eyes became sunk and hollow, his skin assumed a yellow tint, and his health rapidly decayed. Convinced that present sufferings are rendered more acute by the bitter recollection of past pleasures, and that the passions gather strength in solitude, I resolved to tear my unfortunate friend from those scenes which recalled the remembrance of his loss, and to lead him to a more busy part of the island. With this view, I conducted him to the inhabited heights of Williams, which he had never visited, and where agriculture and commerce ever occasioned much bustle and variety. A crowd of carpenters were employed in hewing down the trees, while others were sawing planks. Carriages were passing and repassing on the roads. Numerous herds of oxen and troops of horses were feeding on those ample meadows, over which a number of habitations were scattered. On many spots the elevation of the soil was favourable to the culture of European trees: ripe corn waved its yellow sheaves upon the plains: strawberry plants flourished in the openings of the woods, and hedges of rose bushes along the roads. The freshness of the air, by giving a tension to the nerves, was favourable to the Europeans. From those heights, situated near the middle of the island, and surrounded by extensive forests, you could neither discern Port Louis, the church of the Shaddock Grove, nor any other object which could recall to Paul the remembrance of Virginia. Even the mountains, which appear of various shapes on the side of Port Louis, present nothing to the eye from those plains but a long promontory, stretching itself in a straight and perpendicular line, from whence arise lofty pyramids of rocks, on the summits of which the clouds repose.
"To those scenes I conducted Paul, and kept him continually in action, walking with him in rain and sunshine, night and day, and contriving that he should lose himself in the depths of forests, leading him over untilled grounds, and endeavouring, by violent fatigue, to divert his mind from its gloomy meditations, and change the course of his reflections, by his ignorance of the paths where we wandered. But the soul of a lover finds everywhere the traces of the object beloved. The night and the day, the calm of solitude, and the tumult of crowds, time itself, while it casts the shade of oblivion over so many other remembrances, in vain would tear that tender and sacred recollection from the heart, which, like the needle, when touched by the loadstone, however it may have been forced into agitation, it is no sooner left to repose, than it turns to the pole by which it is attracted. When I inquired of Paul, while we wandered amidst the plains of Williams, 'Where are we now going?' he pointed to the north and said, 'Yonder are our mountains; let us return.'
"Upon the whole, I found that every means I took to divert his melancholy was fruitless, and that no resource was left but an attempt to combat his passion by the arguments which reason suggested. I answered him, 'Yes, there are the mountains where once dwelt your beloved Virginia; and this is the picture you gave her, and which she held, when dying, to her heart; that heart, which even in her last moments only beat for you.' I then gave Paul the little picture which he had given Virginia at the borders of the cocoa tree fountain. At this sight a gloomy joy overspread his looks. He eagerly seized the picture with his feeble hands, and held it to his lips. His oppressed bosom seemed ready to burst with emotion, and his eyes were filled with tears which had no power to flow.
"'My son,' said I, 'listen to him who is your friend, who was the friend of Virginia, and who, in the bloom of your hopes, endeavoured to fortify your mind against the unforeseen accidents of life. What do you deplore with so much bitterness? Your own misfortunes, or those of Virginia? Your own misfortunes are indeed severe. You have lost the most amiable of women: she who sacrificed her own interests to yours, who preferred you to all that fortune could bestow, and considered you as the only recompense worthy of her virtues. But might not this very object, from whom you expected the purest happiness, have proved to you a source of the most cruel distress? She had returned poor, disinherited; and all you could henceforth have partaken with her was your labours: while rendered more delicate by her education, and more courageous by her misfortunes, you would have beheld her every day sinking beneath her efforts to share and soften your fatigues. Had she brought you children, this would only have served to increase her inquietudes and your own, from the difficulty of sustaining your aged parents and your infant family. You will tell me, there would have been reserved to you a happiness independent of fortune, that of protecting a beloved object, which attaches itself to us in proportion to its helplessness; that your pains and sufferings would have served to endear you to each other, and that your passion would have gathered strength from your mutual misfortunes. Undoubtedly virtuous love can shed a charm over pleasures which are thus mingled with bitterness. But Virginia is no more; yet those persons still live, whom, next to yourself, she held most dear; her mother, and your own, whom your inconsolable affliction is bending with sorrow to the grave. Place your happiness, as she did hers, in affording them succour. And why deplore the fate of Virginia? Virginia still exists. There is he assured, a region in which virtue receives its reward. Virginia now is happy. Ah! if, from the abode of angels, she could tell you, as she did when she bid you farewell. 'O, Paul! life is but a trial. I was faithful to the laws of nature, love, and virtue. Heaven found I had fulfilled my duties, and has snatched me for ever from all the miseries I might have endured myself, and all I might have felt for the miseries of others. I am placed above the reach of all human evils, and you pity me! I am become pure and unchangeable as a particle of light, and you would recal me to the darkness of human life! O, Paul! O, my beloved friend! recollect those days of happiness, when in the morning we felt the delightful sensations excited by the unfolding beauties of nature; when we gazed upon the sun, gilding the peaks of those rocks, and then spreading his rays over the bosom of the forests.
"'How exquisite were our emotions while we enjoyed the glowing colours of the opening day, the odours of our shrubs, the concerts of our birds! Now, at the source of beauty, from which flows all that is delightful upon earth, my soul intuitively sees, tastes, hears, touches, what before she could only be made sensible of through the medium of our weak organs. Ah! what language can describe those shores of eternal bliss which I inhabit for ever? All that infinite power and celestial bounty can confer, that harmony which results from friendship with numberless beings, exulting in the same felicity, we enjoy in unmixed perfection. Support, then the trial which is allotted you, that you may heighten the happiness of your Virginia by love which will know no termination, by hymeneals which will be immortal. There I will calm your regrets, I will wipe away your tears. Oh, my beloved friend! my husband! raise your thoughts towards infinite duration, and bear the evils of a moment.'
"My own emotion choked my utterance. Paul, looking's at me stedfastly, cried, 'She is no more! She is no more!' and a long fainting fit succeeded that melancholy exclamation. When restored to himself, he said, 'Since death is a good, and since Virginia is happy, I would die too, and be united to Virginia.' Thus the motives of consolation I had offered, only served to nourish his despair. I was like a man who attempts to save a friend sinking in the midst of a flood, and refusing to swim. Sorrow had overwhelmed his soul. Alas! the misfortunes of early years prepare man for the struggles of life: but Paul had never known adversity.
"I led him back to his own dwelling, where I found his mother and Madame de la Tour in a state of increased languor, but Margaret drooped most. Those lively characters upon which light afflictions make a small impression, are least capable of resisting great calamities.
"'O, my good friend,' said Margaret, 'me-thought, last night, I saw Virginia dressed in white, amidst delicious bowers and gardens. She said to me, 'I enjoy the most perfect happiness;' and then approaching Paul, with a smiling air, she bore him away. While I struggled to retain my son, I felt that I myself was quitting the earth, and that I followed him with inexpressible delight. I then wished to bid my friend farewell, when I saw she was hastening after me with Mary and Domingo. But what seems most strange is, that Madame de la Tour has this very night had a dream attended with the same circumstances.'
"'My dear friend,' I replied, 'nothing, I believe, happens in this world without the permission of God. Dreams sometimes foretell the truth.'
"Madame de la Tour related to me her dream, which was exactly similar; and, as I had never observed in either of those persons any propensity to superstition, I was struck with the singular coincidence of their dreams, which, I had little doubt, would soon be realized.
"What I expected took place. Paul died two months after the death of Virginia, whose name dwelt upon his lips even in his expiring moments. Eight days after the death of her son, Margaret saw her last hour approach with that serenity 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 most precious good,' added she, 'and we ought to desire it. If life be a punishment we should wish for its termination; if it be a trial, we should be thankful that it is short.'
"The governor took care of Domingo and Mary, who were no longer able to labour, and who survived their mistresses but a short time. As for poor Fidele, he pined to death, at the period he lost his master.
"I conducted Madame de la Tour to my dwelling, and she bore her calamities with elevated fortitude. She had endeavoured to comfort Paul and Margaret till their last moments, as if she herself had no agonies to bear. When they were no more, she used to talk of them as of beloved friends, from whom she was not distant. She survived them but one month. Far from reproaching her aunt for those afflictions she had caused, her benign spirit prayed to God to pardon her, and to appease that remorse which the consequences of her cruelty would probably awaken in her breast.
"I heard, by successive vessels which arrived from Europe, that this unnatural relation, haunted by a troubled conscience, accused herself continually of the untimely fate of her lovely niece, and the death of her mother, and became at intervals bereft of her reason. Her relations, whom she hated, took the direction of her fortune, after shutting her up as a lunatic, though she possessed sufficient use of her reason to feel all the pangs of her dreadful situation, and died at length in agonies of despair.
"The body of Paul was placed by the side of his Virginia, at the foot of the same shrubs; and on that hallowed spot the remains of their tender mothers, and their faithful servants, are laid. No marble covers the turf, no inscription records their virtues; but their memory is engraven upon our hearts, in characters, which are indelible; and surely, if those pure spirits still take an interest in what passes upon earth, they love to wander beneath the roofs of these dwellings, which are inhabited by industrious virtue, to console the poor who complain of their destiny, to cherish in the hearts of lovers the sacred flame of fidelity, to inspire a taste for the blessing of nature, the love of labour, and the dread of riches.
"The voice of the people, which is often silent with regard to those monuments raised to flatter the pride of kings, has given to some parts of this island names which will immortalize the loss of Virginia. Near the Isle of Amber, in the midst of sandbanks, is a spot called the Pass of Saint Geran, from the name of the vessel which there perished. The extremity of that point of land, which is three leagues distant, and half covered by the waves, and which the Saint Geran could not double on the night preceding the huricane, is called the Cape of Misfortune; and before us, at the end of the valley, is the Bay of the Tomb, where Virginia was found buried in the sand; as if the waves had sought to restore her corpse to her family, that they might render it the last sad duties on those shores of which her innocence had been the ornament.
"Ye faithful lovers, who were so tenderly united! unfortunate mothers! beloved family! those woods which sheltered you with their foliage, those fountains which flowed for you, those hillocks upon which you reposed, still deplore your loss! No one has since presumed to cultivate that desolated ground, or repair those fallen huts. Your goats are become wild, your orchards are destroyed, your birds are fled, and nothing is heard but the cry of the sparrowhawk, who skims around the valley of rocks. As for myself, since I behold you no more, I am like a father bereft of his children, like a traveller who wanders over the earth, desolate and alone."
In saying these words, the good old man retired, shedding tears, and mine had often flowed, during this melancholy narration.
THE END.