"Adieu! friends dearer than the treasures of India! Adieu! forests of
the North, that I shall never see again!--tender friendship, and the
still dearer sentiment which surpassed it!--days of intoxication and
of happiness adeiu! adieu! We live but for a day, to die during a whole
life!"

This letter appears to one of St. Pierre's most partial biographers,
as if steeped in tears; and he speaks of his romantic and unfortunate
adventure in Poland, as the ideal of a poet's love.

"To be," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "a great poet, and loved before he had
thought of glory! To exhale the first perfume of a soul of genius,
believing himself only a lover! To reveal himself, for the first time,
entirely, but in mystery!"

In his enthusiasm, M. Sainte-Beuve loses sight of the melancholy sequel,
which must have left so sad a remembrance in St. Pierre's own mind.
His suffering, from this circumstance, may perhaps have conduced to his
making Virginia so good and true, and so incapable of giving pain.

In 1766, he returned to Havre; but his relations were by this time dead
or dispersed, and after six years of exile, he found himself once
more in his own country, without employment and destitute of pecuniary
resources.

The Baron de Breteuil at length obtained for him a commission as
Engineer to the Isle of France, whence he returned in 1771. In this
interval, his heart and imagination doubtless received the germs of his
immortal works. Many of the events, indeed, of the "Voyage a l'Ile de
France," are to be found modified by imagined circumstances in "Paul and