Volume 5 / Book 11 — THE THREE VISITORS OF BERNARDIN DE SAINT PIERRE.

One morning while Bernardin de Saint Pierre was admiring, through one of the windows of his apartment, the glowing radiance of the rising sun, and thinking, perhaps, of transferring its bright tints, and the fragrance of early dawn, and the glittering dew-drops, to the pages of his Harmonies de la Nature, a stranger entered with noiseless step; he saluted the poet with deep reverence, respectfully apologizing for so early an intrusion, and it was not until after repeated invitations that he was prevailed upon to take a seat beside him. The young man's face bore the dark olive hue of the southern sun, his black hair fell in waves from his temples, over the collar of his military coat. His look was at once pensive and modest, yet proud. The fashion of his dress, his high boots, the white and fringed gloves, proclaimed him an officer of the French Republic, whom the close of the campaign in Italy had allowed to return home. And such indeed he was, as he took care to inform Bernardin, when his excitement at finding himself in the presence of the celebrated author had a little subsided.

"I congratulate you, sir," said Saint Pierre, "on having served under the great captain, who has so gloriously terminated this campaign. I can enter into such triumphs, for I, too, have been a soldier."

"Would that I were one no longer," exclaimed the young officer—"that I had never been one. War is hateful to me! I know neither enmity nor ambition—the conqueror and the conquered are alike to me. This soft, lovely, morning, with its dewy freshness, passed in tranquil conversation or lonely musings, has more charms for me than all the pomp and circumstance of war. Then, what an avenue to fame! by slaughter!—butchery! Laurels have been strewn in my path. I see nothing but the blood through which I have been wading."

The poet extended his hand to the young soldier, who respectfully kissed it. "Yours," he said, "is true glory. The names of Paul and Virginia will live forever in the memories and heads of men. Ah, sir! this is the brightest day of my life. I asked of fortune only that I might live to see you, to tell you as man, the delightful hours my youth owed to you, and now my bright hope is realized. Behold the treasure of my boyhood, the delight of my manhood, my companion in the college—on the fields of Montenotte and Lodi"—and the stranger took from his pocket a well-worn copy of Paul and Virginia, the leaves kept together only by a few threads.

With all Saint Pierre's modesty, he could not but be deeply moved by the enthusiasm of the young officer. At a time like this, when war was raging both at home and abroad, it was rather unusual to find a soldier warmly interested in an Indian idyl, and busying himself about a poet, in his obscure retreat on the banks of a pretty stream.

"I am delighted," he said, "not so much with your too indulgent estimate of an ephemeral book, but with the sympathy between us—that bond of common love for mankind and for nature, a love of whose inspirations my book is but a feeble utterance of. It is only in some such obscure corner as this, that we dare now own that we love God and Heaven, the dewy morning and peace on earth. Discord still reigns at Paris. Is it not so?"

The young officer looked up with a sad expression in his dark eyes. "Alas, yes! it is reigning more furiously than ever; but it is too painful a subject; let us change it. Are you at present engaged in any work? and are these its first sheets?"

Bernardin smiled as he answered—"They are old memorials to the Directory at Paris. I was once the secretary, the literary man of the revolutionary club of Essoune, the republicans of that town having more warmth of patriotism than power of style, employed me to draw up their memorials, and I escaped the guillotine by accepting the office."

"The author of Paul and Virginia secretary to a village revolutionary club!"

"Neither more nor less. It was not very poetical; but so it was. However, during that time I have had some hours of leisure which I have devoted to a work that has been the dream of my life, and the thought of which has cheered me, in the forests of Sweden, and under the burning skies of the Isle of France. My object is to reveal the divine intelligence to the human race, through the universal relation between all beings. From physical order I elicit physical good; from the good, the moral, and from the moral, God. And the title of the book is to be the Harmonies of Nature. I was working at it when you came in, and meditating on the wise providence which, while giving to different beings different organs, has supplied the apparent inequality by special qualities and counterbalancing advantages. I intend also to treat of the harmonies of the stars. Oh! how beautiful are our nights in France!"

"And I, too, thought so, till I had seen the nights in Italy," exclaimed the young stranger. "There every star is a living token of friendship or of love. Two friends parted by long exile each pledge themselves to look at the same star at the same hour, and the light thus shared is a link between them. The young girl gives to the bright stars of the summer nights her own name and that of her lover, till the whole firmament is full of Bettinas and Ciprianas, Francescas and Giottos. Should one of these tender links be severed by death, the still remaining one is comforted in her sorrow by seeing the bright memorial of her beloved still shining on the borders of that heavenly horizon, where their meeting will be forever."

"This is indeed a tender harmony. Yes, love is every where. But," continued Bernardin, delighted at being understood; "but tell me, do you yourself write? With mental energies such as yours, why should you not cast upon the troubled waters of this age some thought that may yet be the fructifying seed to be found after many days. All soldiers write well."

"I do write a little, sir," and the young officer blushed as he answered; "since your kind encouragement has anticipated my request, and thus emboldened me to make it, I venture to ask you to cast your eye over a few pages written to beguile the hours of a lonely midnight watch. You will remember it is the book of a soldier, and one almost a foreigner."

"I thank you for the confidence reposed in me," said Saint Pierre, "and I am persuaded the friend will have no need to bias the judge in the impartial opinion that you have a right to claim from me."

The young officer now rose, and with a request to be allowed to repeat his visit, and a cordial, though respectful pressure of Saint Pierre's hand, took his leave, and long after the garden-gate had closed behind him, Bernardin stood watching the cloud of dust in which had disappeared his young visitor, and the steed on which he galloped back to Paris.

"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,

And in as low a voice, the officer went on—"Yes! happy the wise man who penetrates the arcana of nature, and who tramples under foot the world's prejudices." And as he stooped to pluck a daisy, he added, "who the calm votary of the silvan deities beholds with unenvious eye the consular pomp and the glittering diadem. Ah, sir! you, too, like Virgil—do you know he is my poet of all poets?" And before they had gone the round of the garden, the sage and the soldier had repeated almost the whole of the second book of the Georgics; and now, having begged and obtained a flower as a memento of his visit, the officer took his leave, with the promise of soon returning and bringing with him his brother.

"If all republicans," said Bernardin, "were like these two brothers, the republic would be heaven, and I need not so long to die."

And with fresh impulse, and an interest increased by the sympathy of his visitor in his love of flowers, Saint Pierre turned to his labors. The second part of his Harmonies de la Nature was finished, and he was now engaged upon the last division of his great work—"The Harmonies of Human Nature," when one day a knock at the door of his library made him raise his head to see, as he believed, the face of one of his two friends in the Italian army, though whether the elder or the younger he could not at once distinguish. On nearer survey, he discovered, to his great perplexity, that neither the one nor the other stood before him. The uniform of this third officer was exactly the same, he had the same masses of black hair, the same eyes, but though a little older than the first, and younger than the second of his former visitors, he seemed to bear more traces than either of the struggle and the vigil; and his brow was graver and more thoughtful. Still the triple resemblance was most striking, and for a moment Bernardin scarcely knew whether he was to greet him as a stranger; but before he could speak, the visitor introduced himself as the brother of the two officers, the kindness of whose reception had encouraged him to pay his respects to the friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau, to the illustrious author of the Etudes de la Nature, and to venture to offer the admiring homage of a blunt soldier.

Was it those lips with their Attic cut, and firm grace, which smile and threat seemed alike to become, or was it the deep voice, the piercing eagle glance, or his already high reputation as the greatest captain of the age, that riveted the attention of the philosopher upon this last of the three brothers, and indelibly impressed upon his memory every word of the conversation which now ensued?

But this third brother and the poet spoke not of scenery, nor stars, nor sun, nor streams, nor flowers. They spoke of human nature, of the universal brotherhood of mankind, of philosophy, and patriotism. They spoke, too, of the present evil days—the old man with some little bitterness and much indulgence, the young man with hopes aspiring and daring as his conquests; and while laying open future prospects with almost prophetic clearness, he showed the certain and impending destruction of all parties by each other, and the consequent and near approach of peace.

"God grant it;" cried Bernardin de Saint Pierre.

"God grants all to the firm will and the determined purpose," was the answer.

Some expressive pauses made breaks in a conversation which was less an interchange of words than of thoughts. Vainly did Bernardin several times attempt to introduce the subject of the campaigns in Italy, as an opening for some complimentary tribute to the courage, the presence of mind, the clear mental vision, the resolute powers of action, of his visitor; the latter as constantly evaded the subject, for with all the exquisite tact which was his great characteristic through life, he guessed the philosopher could accord but a reluctant homage to any triumph of the sword, even when not drawn in the service of ambition. He felt, too, that the warrior should be like a fortress, from whose strong, silent walls, is heard only in time of war the booming of its artillery.

Thus, therefore, ran the dialogue:

"Italy is on fire with your name."

"I have founded chairs of philosophy, of history, and oratory, in most of the conquered cities."

"Montenotte will ever be one of the most glorious monuments of French valor."

"I have pensioned all the savants of Bologna, Florence, and Milan."

"You have rivaled the renown of the immortal generals of antiquity."

"Whenever a city was taken, my first care was to command public monuments and private property to be respected, and to prohibit under pain of death all outrage to women, and before I allowed guards to be planted at my own door, I took care sentinels were at the gates of every church and hospital."

"How you must have longed for repose, were it only to indulge the bright dreams of the future."

"The actual and the real for me. I like best to shut myself up in my quarters to pursue my favorite studies of mathematics and history."

Struck with enthusiastic admiration of such simplicity, and such wise moderation, Bernardin ceased any longer to pay forced compliments to the military prowess with which he had no sympathy, and now poured out his whole heart in homage to his noble qualities as a legislator and as a man. Could he do less than read to him some few pages of his "Harmonies"—the winding-up of his "Harmonies of Nature." To one of the three brothers, worthy to comprehend the sublimity of the science of Heaven, he had shown the stars; to another, tender as Rousseau, the flowers; and now the graver pages of his book to a third—graver, wiser than either—as wise as Marcus Aurelius; "nay, wiser," said Bernardin, "for I am sure he never would consent to be made emperor."

And now, who were these three officers of the Italian army?

The first officer, who wooed the stars and the dewy morning, and who had no ambition, was Louis Bonaparte, afterward King of Holland.

The second officer, who delighted in flowers, and in floral dials, was Joseph Bonaparte, afterward King of the two Spains and of the Indies.

The third officer—the brother of the two others—who was a republican, a philosopher, a philanthropist, a lover of peace, and who had no ambition, was Napoleon Bonaparte, afterward Emperor of the French, and King of Italy!

What an eclogue for Bernardin de Saint Pierre—Two Kings and an Emperor!