Chapter 3
Paul et Virginie

Reintegration

Bernardin's bent for imagining ideal societies is evident throughout his narrative production. Parts of L'Arcadie — the title says enough — were published in 1788. L'Amazone, revealing a contemporary Utopian settlement in South America, was left incomplete at his death. Paul et Virginie however differs not only in being far more rich and complex as a piece of literature. Its focus is less collective than familial, and — its most obviously regressive feature — its protagonists are children. It is located exotically, but in a place that its author had known: the Ile de France (Mauritius). Bernardin had offered a detailed account of this French colony in his Voyage à l'île de France (published in 1773). There however he presented it mainly as physically sterile and morally odious.¹ In his fiction its status will be almost the opposite. As the principal modern critical authority on Paul et Virginie puts it, 'l'île enfer dev[ie]nt, ou peu s'en faut, une île-paradis'.² The factual Voyage did not sell well; the idealizing fiction (first published in 1788) was a huge and enduring success.³

Bernardin himself consistently designates Paul et Virginie as a pastoral.⁴ This model is already implicit at the start of the 'Avant-propos' of 1788, when he avers that 'nos poètes ont assez reposé leurs amants sur le bord des ruisseaux'. Pastoral means lovers, repose and the bucolic — an idyllic oneness between protagonists, sentiments and setting. He has chosen to place his lovers instead 'à l'ombre des cocotiers'. The idealized setting is in effect transposed or updated. But in his account of his work it comes first:⁵

Je sais que des voyageurs pleins de goût nous ont donné des descriptions enchantées de plusieurs îles de la mer du Sud; mais les mœurs de leurs habitants, et encore plus celles des Européens qui y abordent, en gâtent souvent le paysage. J'ai désiré réunir à la beauté de la nature entre les tropiques, la beauté morale d'une petite société.

He begins with tropical nature. But its enchantment is spoiled in reality by its inhabitants and especially by Europeans. Bernardin's writing however is to answer his desire. This is to unite its beauty with the moral beauty within it of a little group. He then says that he will exhibit various 'grandes vérités'. But he states only one: 'que notre bonheur consiste à vivre suivant la nature et la vertu' (pp. 93-94). Modem critics have observed that the last two categories are far from compatible, as the more rigorous philosophy of Bernardins master Rousseau had clearly established. Nor is the outcome of Bernardini story 'le bonheur'. Presenting these disparate values as one again suggests wish fulfilment.

The narrative itself is told by a character within the fiction who is presented as 'déjà sur l'âge' and white-haired.6 His mien is accordingly 'noble et simple' (p. 117). The old man functions to endow the story with his authority — both as wisdom and as pathos. But he also gives the story immediacy, for he was present at the events. In this respect Bernardin's retrospective narration approximates to the effect achieved by the use of letters in our two previous works. Further, his narrator addresses a first narrator, who serves to vouch for his truth while relaying his words to us — as the authenticity of one of Rousseau's letter-writers is confirmed by another within the fiction, and that of Zilia's letters is guaranteed by the paratext's chain of authorized transmission. This fictional addressee is once more the surrogate for the real addressees, ourselves. In this case however he is not just a reader of writing, but one who was actually in the presence of the old man, and who heard his tale on the scene.

Origins; 'Une petite société'

The narrative begins not with people, but with a rugged landscape which contains the signs of a former habitation. 'Sur le côté oriental de la montagne qui s'élève derrière le Port-Louis de l'île de France, on voit, sur un terrain jadis cultivé, les ruines de deux petites cabanes.' Suggested already are what will be key elements of the narrative, with their spatial, temporal and sentimental relations. We have the island itself, a mountain, and implicitly ('le Port-Louis') the sea around it. On the mountainside is a patch of land formerly cultivated (production from the earth) and the ruins of two little cabins (modest shelters then, partially obliterated now; twinned). The signs of a human past within great natural surroundings are presented apparently impersonally ('on') but with a sense of loss conveyed in a simple but poetic register ('jadis'). This description is realist but also symbolic and pathetic. It continues: 'Elles sont situées presque au milieu d'un bassin formé par de grands rochers, qui n'a qu'une seule ouverture tournée au nord.' The second sentence brings out the geometry of the dispositions described. The huts are almost at the centre of the declivity; its sole opening is northwards (not 'presque', therefore precisely, northwards? 'turned' by some power or logic?). Brought out too are the atavistic implications: the landscape itself has formed within steep rocks what is called a 'bassin', suggesting a womb-like space. We can see now that these ideas were already implicit in the very first sentence: the geometry of vertical mountain ('qui s'élève') and horizontal sea, if not too of cabins standing on a 'terrain'; and the larger protected space of the island itself in the midst of the ocean. Conjoined here I suggest are the most primitive of all physical and human principles: the landscape, the shelter and the womb.

The rest of the first paragraph treats the larger prospect. On aperçoit sur la gauche la montagne appelée le morne de la Découverte, d'où l'on signale les vaisseaux qui abordent dans l'île.' Again we have mountain and sea, with a suggestion of the pristine ('la Découverte') but the idea of a signage which is now human, deliberate and public (Ton signale'), expressing hope and marking solidarity. Then left is balanced with right, as mountain and sea are complemented by collective settlement. 'Sur la droite, le chemin qui mène du Port-Louis au quartier des Pamplemousses; ensuite l'église de ce nom, qui s'élève avec ses avenues de bambous au milieu d'une grande plaine.'7 Here we have another vertical at the centre of a horizontal (constituting a civic and formally religious version of the isolated cabins in the middle of the 'terrain'). And we have a path (compare the 'vaisseaux qui abordent'?). But this is also just one of the avenues (implicitly therefore straight) leading to the church which are marked out by vegetation. Thus the forms of Nature show the communitarian divine monument, as they indicate more obscurely the shelter of the 'bassin'.⁸ By the shore, we are then told, one can see 'la baie du Tombeau' and 'le cap Malheureux', Toponymy is suddenly ominous. In the distance, the paragraph concludes, is 'le Coin de Mire, qui ressemble à un bastion au milieu des flots'. Figurative significance is finally made explicit ('qui ressemble à') in respect of this tiny island. As a fort among the waves, it confirms and repeats the symbolic status of the main island. But it also prefigures the moral drama which will be central to the story: that of the stability of virtue against all agitation.

We move to the second paragraph. 'A l'entrée de ce bassin, d'où l'on découvre tant d'objets, les échos de la montagne répètent sans cesse le bruit des vents qui agitent les forêts voisines, et le fracas des vagues qui brisent au loin sur les récifs; mais au pied même des cabanes, on n'entend plus aucun bruit.' Here the 'natural' image of a calm encircled by agitation is marvellously developed. We are placed initially at the 'entrée' where the closed 'bassin' and open panorama meet — the mid-point of double and opposed orientation.⁹ Outside, to waves breaking on reefs are added winds disturbing forests. And to the visual account in the first paragraph is added another sense-dimension which not only doubles the impact but is in itself more immediate: the aural. Moreover, what we hear ('le bruit', 'le fracas') is amplified by the landscape itself ('les échos [...] répètent sans cesse'). At the cabins however one hears no sound. Now taken inside the basin we return to the visual: 'on ne voit autour de soi que de grands rochers escarpés comme des murailles. Des bouquets d'arbres croissent à leurs bases, dans leur fentes, et jusque sur leurs cimes, où s'arrêtent les nuages.' The idea of a fortified enclosure is emphasized ('murailles'). But suggested too is the notion of the steep rocks bearing a kind of floral covering. Traced from 'bases' to 'cimes', it takes us from ground into clouds. Then we are told that 'Les pluies que leurs pitons attirent, peignent souvent les couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel sur leurs flancs verts et bruns, et entretiennent à leurs pieds les sources dont se forme la petite rivière des Lataniers.' Nature displays itself ('attirent' and 'peignent' are active, like 's'élève'). At the same time it nourishes itself ('les pluies [...] entretiennent [···]'), in a kind of circulation now taking us back down. Increasingly conveyed is the notion of a great body: 'bassin', 'flancs', 'pieds', and 'fentes' (with the 'bouquets' which sprout from them) suggesting especially a primitive female body.¹⁰ The declivity, rockbound yet fecund, is its protected centre.

The next sentence confirms this interpretation: 'Un grand silence règne dans leur enceinte où tout est paisible' (my emphases). One element however is then modified. 'A peine l'écho y répète le murmure des palmistes qui croissent sur leurs plateaux élevés, et dont on voit les longues flèches toujours balancées par les vents.' In the basin one scarcely hears, relayed again through the landscape by echoic repetition, the winds blowing on the high plateaux. Up there the agitation of nature is unceasing ('toujours'); down here it is almost inaudible. The wind blowing the trees produces an effect that is aurally and visually like a mysterious address to humanity: the palms murmur, and their fronds wave. The paragraph ends: 'Un jour doux éclaire le fond de ce bassin, où le soleil ne luit qu'à midi; mais dès l'aurore ses rayons en frappent le couronnement, dont les pics s'élevant au-dessus des ombres de la montagne, paraissent d'or et de pourpre sur l'azur des deux'. We are told that the innermost part of the basin is lit gently — 'doux' connoting peace but 'éclaire' indicating a particular radiance at this spot. Geometry returns transcendentally, with the evocation of the vertical sun at the diurnal midpoint, and the horizontal sun at dawn. Its rays at daybreak strike (another active verb) the peaks of the rocks. In the basin, we were told, silence reigns. Here the crown is illuminated by the visionary beams. Exhibited, above the mountain gloom (the Platonic 'ombres' of our earthly condition?), is the mountain glory. The heights of the earth are shown as gold and purple — the colours of royalty. Their background is the heavens of blue — the colour of the Virgin and purity.

The third paragraph begins 'J aimais à me rendre dans ce lieu'. Only now do we have the emergence of a personalized narrator, who tells us that he was drawn to this spot, which offers the pleasure of vast prospects and solitude. One day he had seen a dignified old man dressed in the local way and they exchanged greetings. 'Excité par cette marque de confiance', the first narrator engages him in conversation. 'Confiance' (a key word in our two previous novels) indicates a prompt mutual sympathy. However the old man is assigned a superior moral authority (already implicit in his venerable appearance) by the first words each speaks. He is addressed as 'Mon père', and replies with the appelation 'Mon fils'. Asked to whom the cabins belonged, his answer is heavily freighted. The deserted place was occupied twenty years before by 'deux familles qui y avaient trouvé le bonheur. Leur histoire est touchante' (p. 117). Having given advance instructions on meaning and feeling, the old man at the request of the younger tells him the story.

We hear initially of Mme de la Tour, who came to the island in effect as a victim of European aristocratic prejudice. In France, because she had married for love below her noble rank, her own family refused to provide for her. Her husband took her to the colonies to seek their fortune, but he soon died, leaving her pregnant and without resources. She encounters Marguerite, who constitutes a kind of double. Marguerite too is a victim of the French nobility.11 A 'paysanne' misled by the false marriage-promises of an aristocrat, she found herself pregnant, and fled in order to 'cacher sa faute'. The island is presented or confirmed at the start of the story as a refuge from Europe With in it however Mme de la Tour seeks a further refuge. In search of 'quelque gorge de montagne, quelque asile caché, où elle pût vivre seule et inconnue', recounts the old man, 'elle s'achemina de la ville vers ces rochers, pour s'y retirer comme dans un nid' (p. 119). It is here that she comes upon 'Marguerite qui allaitait son enfant'. Already occupying and cultivating this 'petit coin', Marguerite takes her in (p. 121). Thus the significance of the little space is insistently marked. It is a hidden shelter, a nest towards which one journeys, and a place of maternal nourishment. Among the rocks, where a peasant mother breastfeeds her offspring, it constitutes almost literally the desired gorge de montagne'.12 Marguerite tearfully offers the newcomer 'sa cabane et son amitié', and La Tour embraces her. The welcome is accompanied not only by this further corporeal flow and joining, and the offer of shelter and human solidarity ('cabane', 'amitié'), but by a religious invocation. 'Ah! Dieu veut finir mes peines' exclaims La Tour, placing the event under the aegis of a benevolent Divinity.

The shelter is to be shared. From this point, the principle of binary complementarity becomes still more strongly marked. The two women agree to 'partager entre elles le fond de ce bassin'. The territorial division is made by the old man, who lives not far away. But the women ask him to 'ne pas séparer leur demeure'. He duly builds a cabin for La Tour next to that of Marguerite, 'au milieu du bassin' (pp. 122-23). La Tour has a devoted slave, called Marie; Marguerite has a devoted slave, called Domingue. The two slaves marry. The two women give birth: Marguerite to a boy and La Tour to a girl. The old man stands as godfather to both infants. Marguerite, who called her son Paul, also names La Tour's daughter Virginie. 'Elle sera vertueuse, dit-elle, et elle sera heureuse' (pp. 123-24). The formula essentially repeats that proclaimed in the 'Avant-propos'. But now it is a vow for a particular female child.

The community is fecund, yet it is sexless. La Tour and Marguerite each bear a child without a father. Each has consciously put sex behind her (to mourn the husband, or amend the 'faute'). They have each other, "se donnant les doux noms d'amie, de compagne et de sœur'. And the narrator assures us that 'si d'anciens feux plus vifs que l'amitié se réveillaient dans leur âme, une religion pure, aidée par des mœurs chastes, les dirigeait vers une autre vie, comme la flamme qui s'envole vers le ciel' (p. 126). The women's residual sexual desire is reoriented as spiritual aspiration. Though the two slaves are married, sexual activity between them seems unlikely, as we are told that Domingue is 'déjà sur l'âge'. (In any case, assigned no dwelling of their own, they must sleep in the huts of their respective mistresses and thus apart.) The same phrase was used at the start to describe the narrator, the community's only regular visitor. Though he must have been less old at the time of the initial events, his role within them is already patriarchal (legislator, builder, advisor). We know in any case that he lived celibately (p. 209). Male sexuality is absent from a little community of women, children and slaves.

Essentially mothers, the two women will place their children henceforth at the centre of their life. We are told that,

Leur amitié mutuelle redoublait à la vue de leurs enfants, fruits d'un amour également infortuné. Elles prenaient plaisir à les mettre ensemble dans le même bain, et à les coucher dans le même berceau. Souvent elles les changeaient de lait. 'Mon amie, disait Mme de La Tour, chacune de nous aura deux enfarits, et chacun de nos enfants aura deux mères'. Comme deux bourgeons qui restent sur deux arbres de la même espèce, dont la tempête a brisé toutes les branches, viennent à produire des fruits plus doux, si chacun d'eux, détaché du tronc maternel, est greffé sur le tronc voisin; ainsi ces deux petits enfants, privés de tous leurs parents, se remplissaient de sentiments [...] tendres. [...] Déjà leurs mères parlaient de leur mariage sur leurs berceaux, (pp. 126—27)

On the part of the mothers we have here a hint of polymorphous perversity ('chacune de nous aura [...]'). But it remains asexual, though it is sensual and even erotic, for them ('souvent elles les changeaient de lait') and the infants ('se remplissaient'). The narrator designates the children, not once but twice, as 'fruits'. The second time this is within an elaborate simile. They are likened to buds of trees of the same species, each taken from its own mother-trunk and grafted on to its neighbour. Propagation becomes not a human heterosexual event, but an organic vegetable event between females. Another model implicit here is that of foetal twins. The mothers like to place the infants together within a protective enclosure. The 'bain' and the 'berceau' are in effect versions of the 'bassin' and the womb. From birth the mothers intend their two children for the marriage which will formally unite them.

But from the origin too the infants themselves want to be together. 'Rien, en effet, n'était comparable à l'attachement qu'ils se témoignaient déjà', says the narrator. 'Si Paul venait à se plaindre, on lui montrait Virginie; à sa vue, il souriait et s'apaisait. Si Virginie souffrait, on était averti par les cris de Paul.' At this earliest stage, their attachment is manifested by the simple desire for presence and by shared feeling. Then it is expressed through an almost literal interweaving of bodies. 'Pouvant à peine marcher', they were to be seen 'se tenant ensemble par les mains et sous les bras'. At night one found them 'souvent couchés dans le même berceau [...], les mains passées mutuellement autour de leurs cous, et endormis dans les bras l'un de l'autre.' Their spontaneous embrace reproduces the binary figure in the bath or the cradle. The narrator likens it to representations of 'la constellation des Gémeaux'. From their own verbal beginnings, Paul and Virginie perceive themselves as brother and sister. 'Lorsqu'ils surent parler, les premiers noms qu'ils apprirent à se donner, furent ceux de frère et de sœur' (p. 127). The sibling model and the marital model of their affective relation reinforce each other as ideal images. But taken literally they are at odds. The more primitive familial bond is in tension with the prospective adult relation which is sexual and societal.

The original analogy of twins can however accomodate that of brother and sister. As the narrative moves on from infancy, emphasis moves from the former to the latter. That is, binary identity becomes binary complementarity. The roles of Paul and Virginie within the little society are firmly gendered. 'L'économie, la propreté, le soin de préparer un repas champêtre, fut du ressort de Virginie.' As to 'son frère [...] toujours en action, il bêchait le jardin avec Domingue, ou, une petite hache à la main, il le suivait dans les bois' (p. 128). Virginie is indoors, Paul is outdoors. Her domain is the household, his is what lies beyond. But while these roles are complementary, their formulation itself shows that they are not simply equivalent. Little mother and little man are different kinds of principle. Virginie is already becoming — in her turn — the nourishing centre. This is confirmed if we return to the structure of simple contrast. Given that Paul is 'toujours en action', Virginie must represent 'repos'. Then we are told of Paul that 'si dans [s]es courses une belle fleur, un bon fruit ou un nid d'oiseaux se présentaient à lui, eussent-ils été au haut d'un arbre, il l'escaladait pour les apporter à sa sœur'. Here we go back to the structure of periphery and centre: he brings home gifts, from the natural world, to her. Both structures are incorporated in the famous anecdote of the 'jupon bouffant' which immediately follows. The old man recounts how he saw little Virginie holding her garment over her head while hurrying in from the rain. 'Elle tenait Paul par le bras, enveloppé presqu'en entier de la même couverture, riant [...]. Ces deux têtes charmantes renfermées sous ce jupon bouffant, me rappelèrent les enfants de Léda, enclos dans la même coquille' (p. 128).13 The children of Leda are 'les Gémeaux', confirming the figure of the twins. But the relationship between Virginie and Paul here is not that of equivalence. She shelters him.

Thus we have the models of twinning, complementarity by simple contrast, and complementarity with Virginie as the centre. In the third version she is identified with protection, nourishment and calm, like the 'bassin' itself. But the 'bassin' represents both nature and transcendance. A fourth version of the relationship of Paul and Virginie links her to transcendance. The two children are described. Virginie is fair, Paul is dark, and so forth. But, oddly, we are told that her blue eyes have an 'obliquité naturelle vers le ciel', suggesting 'une légère mélancolie' (p. 131). The notations, particularly the 'obliquité', are obviously allegorical. Virginie's gaze, seemingly indicating a faint distress, is towards the heavens. The implication is that she seeks the higher realm, and that she herself represents a spiritual principle. Shortly after we have the episode of the runaway slave whom she tries to succour. It is that suffering creature — the truest voice — who hails her as 'Ange de Dieu', and offers to follow her anywhere (p. 137). Her more regular acts of charity are performed, the narrator will tell us, 'avec une grâce ineffable' (p. 163). All this points fairly clearly to her true home.

The one sequence focused on Paul tells us how he transforms the 'bassin'. (Virginie is, Paul does.) Of it he makes a garden which is extraordinarily various and fecund.¹⁴ The plan is his, but Nature furnishes the materials and guides his planting: 'chaque végétal croissait dans son site propre'. Soon, 'ce vaste enclos paraissait de son centre comme un amphithéâtre de verdure, de fruits et de fleurs'. But much more is offered too. Trees arching over ravines provide underground shelter; internal relations show 'harmonie'; avenues reveal prospects; ponds mirror their surroundings and the skies (pp. 150-52). This 'vast' creation is evidently far beyond the capacities of a child or the little community. But that in a sense is the point: nature itself labours the basin. The garden is luxuriant, and good to man, while exhibiting its own order and suggesting transcendance. We may recall the great symbolic landscape presented at the start of the narrative. The island contains the garden. But the garden in turn contains a third protected space, as the narrator will tell us. 'De tout ce que renfermait cette enceinte, rien n'était plus agréable que ce qu'on appelait Le Repos de Virginie.' This is 'un enfoncement d'où sort une fontaine qui forme, dès sa source, une petite flaque d'eau, au milieu d'un pré d'une herbe fine' (p. 156). Thus Virginie is associated with a natural source or little pond. It and she are identified with 'repos', while the surrounding garden shows Paul's activity. Here we return to the model of centre and periphery. We see too that 'le repos de Virginie' signifies not just Virginie's rest but Virginie as rest.

Both children are assimilated to a gentle natural world. This can be considered another version of their relationship — the last for our analysis but perhaps the most fundamental. We saw that they were likened as infants to two buds and to fruit, and then to twins within the shell of one egg. Later we are told that 'leur vie semblait attachée à celle des arbres' (p. 169). But the identification with the vegetable world is made formally, by the community itself, turning a rhetorical simile into a permanent organic emblem. At Paul's birth the old man gives Marguerite a coconut, which she plants by the little pond to serve as a memorial. La Tour at the birth of Virginie does the same. 'Il naquit de ces deux fruits deux cocotiers qui formaient toutes les archives de ces deux familles; l'un se nommait l'arbre de Paul, et l'autre, l'arbre de Virginie,' The two trees are for the community the sole annals, the living history, of the children. The growth of each tree is 'dans la même proportion' as its namesake. At twelve years 'ils entrelaçaient leurs palmes, et laissaient pendre leurs jeunes grappes de cocos, au-dessus du bassin de la fontaine' (p. 157). The repetition of the image of entwining is now a natural allegory of twinned affection.

The heavily hanging fruit are suggestively sexual, implying that the children at twelve are also reaching this stage. Virginie's fringed declivity of 'repos' strongly implies the female genitals. Yet sexuality seems absent from nature and from the imagination of these two children. Virginie brings her goats to the spring, but they only graze and pose, while 'elle préparait des fromages avec leur lait'. Goats, like women, signify milk not sex. Goats also signify milk not meat: the children are vegetarian (p. 159). Paul brought Virginie fruit, and nests. The latter motif returns at the spring, when we read that Paul, 'voyant que ce lieu était aimé de Virginie, y apporta de la forêt voisine, des nids de toute sorte d'oiseaux'. Duly following their fledgelings, 'les pères et les mères' join the colony. Virginie feeds them (her role), and at her appearance they all rush to her feet. 'Paul et elle s'amusaient avec transport de leurs jeux, de leurs appétits, et de leurs amours' (pp. 157-5S). Despite the last phrase, the 'appetites' of these birds are evidently gustatory not sexual. We are shown a gathering of gentle little creatures which give the children delight. The flock is mildly Biblical in its conspectus of species ('toute sorte'), allegorical in its devotion to Virginie, charming in its diminutive membership, domesticated in its behaviour, and bourgeois-sentimental in its happy families.

'Aimables enfants, vous passiez ainsi dans l'innocence vos premiers jours [...]!' cries the narrator (p. 158). Innocence does not exclude an understanding of their own world, but it is immediate and affective, Providential and Finalist. 'Chaque jour était pour eux un jour de fête, et tout ce qui les environnait un temple divin où ils admiraient sans cesse une Intelligence infinie, toute-puissante et amie des hommes' (p. 161). Beyond their world they knew nothing, and this was for the best: 'leur ignorance ajoutai[t] encore à leur félicité'. The final peroration on their childhood affirms 'Ainsi croissaient ces deux enfants de la nature'. It concludes by joining 'nature' with Christianity, gender and origins, in its own version of Paradise. 'Au matin de leur vie, ils en avaient toute la fraîcheur: tels que dans le jardin d'Eden parurent nos premiers parents, lorsque sortant des mains de Dieu, ils se virent, s'approchèrent, et conversèrent d'abord comme frère et comme sœur; Virginie, douce, modeste, confiante comme Eve; et Paul, semblable à Adam, ayant la taille d'un homme, avec la simplicité d'un enfant' (pp. 169—70). The long first section of the work closes with the voice of each child in turn lyrically addressing the other.

Fall

At the start of a new paragraph, we have a marked change in tone. 'Cependant, depuis quelque temps, Virginie se sentait agitée d'un mal inconnu' (p. 172). The central element here is 'un mal'. Preceded by the evocation of Eden, its weight becomes not just physical but moral and even theological. We are told of its symptoms: 'une langueur universelle abattait son corps'; 'elle fuyait ses jeux innocents'; 'elle errait ça et là dans les lieux les plus solitaires de l'habitation, cherchant partout du repos et ne le trouvant nulle part'. The meaning of such behaviour would not have been 'inconnu' to Virginie had she been familiar with European literature. These are the stock indices — from Sappho or Virgil's Dido to Rousseau's Julie and Sophie — of a woman in the grip of sexual love.15 They acquire however a new figurative significance in this novel. Virginie, the principle of stability, is 'agitée'. Identified with the home, she seeks solitary places; the embodiment of calm, she is driven to random movement; 'repos' is precisely what she has to seek and can nowhere find.

The object of her agitation is then indicated. 'Quelquefois, à la vue de Paul, elle allait vers lui en folâtrant; puis tout à coup [...] un rouge vif colorait ses joues pâles, et ses yeux n'osaient plus s'arrêter sur les siens.' Then, 'elle fuyait tremblante vers sa mère' — a notation reflecting the new cult of the family. Suggestive of the tensions within that same cult is the explanation finally summarized in the next sentence: 'L'infortunée se sentait troublée par les caresses de son frère'. He is of course not her brother. But the designation, customarily used both by her and by the narrator, strengthens the idea of an interdiction. Why sexual desire itself should be perceived as 'un mal', in the midst of nature, is not evident. What is clear is that Virginie understands that the occasion of her symptoms is her sexual love for Paul. Then we read: 'Paul ne comprenait rien à des caprices si nouveaux: et si étranges' (pp. 172—73). Again there may be an element of free indirect style here. But it is clear that Paul does not understand.

'Uli mal n'arrive guère seul', says the narrator, sententiously confirming the idea of a vitiation of the Edenic world. The island undergoes a terrible heatwave. Rivers dry up, the earth cracks, flocks gasp for breath. The event is natural but evidently symbolic. Phenomena are presented like portents: 'l'orbe de la lune, tout rouge, se levait, dans un horizon embrumé, d'une grandeur démesurée' (p. 173). This cosmic event bestows extraordinary significance on the modest drama of Virginie. More than an objective correlative, its resonances are specifically Biblical.¹⁶ On the other hand it maintains the 'sympathetic' relation between Virginie and the order of nature. Some attributes textually repeat her own ('la lune [...] rouge', 'les troupeaux abbatus'), as the whole heatwave hints at the sexually charged female body.

The two visitations are then brought together. 'Dans une de ces nuits ardentes, Virginie sentit redoubler tous les symptômes de son mal.' A shift of tense to the historic present marks the crisis. 'Elle [...] ne trouvait dans aucune attitude ni le sommeil, ni le repos. Elle s'achemine, à la clarté de la lune, vers sa fontaine. [...] Elle se plonge dans son bassin'. At first she is soothed. She thinks of Paul, of their shared bathing during her 'enfance', and his subsequent embellishment of this place just for her. She sees on her own body in the water

les reflets des deux palmiers plantés à la naissance de son frère et à la sienne, qui entrelaçaient au-dessus de sa tête leurs rameaux verts et leurs jeunes cocos. [...] Elle soupire [...] et un feu dévorant la saisit. Aussitôt elle sort, effrayée, des ces dangereux ombrages, et de Ces eaux plus brûlantes que le soleil de la zone torride. Elle court auprès de sa mère chercher un appui contre elle-même. (pp. 174-75)

It is the memory of an innocent infancy which brings out the present awareness of her guilty desire. The confrontation is figured by the interwoven trees reflected upon her naked body, vegetable embrace versus human sexuality. The 'reflets' from above rebuke her impurity. Shadows close in; water changes from cooling to burning. What was a shrine ("s'achemina') has been defiled. Virginie runs to her mother. She cannot speak Paul's name; but 'Madame de La Tour pénétrait bien la cause du mal de sa fille'. Directing her daughter to God, La Tour thematizes the issues. 'Il t'éprouve aujourd'hui pour te récompenser demain. Songe que nous ne sommes sur la terre que pour exercer la vertu' (p. 175). Virtue means maintaining 'un appui contre elle-même'.17

Virginie must be strong for herself, and strong for Paul too. But if we look back we find that this has been her role from the very beginning. We quoted the first instance of their 'attachement', as babies: his crying was stilled by seeing her, and her distress prompted his cries. The notations are not in fact equivalent: in both she is (already) his affective centre. But the imbalance is deeper, for the account continues: 'mais cette aimable fille dissimulait aussitôt son mal, pour qu'il ne souffrît pas de sa douleur' (p. 127). Baby Virginie hid her own suffering, to protect baby Paul. From the start, the girl takes the burden for them both. By pretending that all is well with her, she is also in effect already vindicating the moral or Providential order. Her early consciousness of that great question is shown in the episode of the runaway slave. Having attempted succour, she exclaims 'Qu'il est difficile de faire le bien! Il n'y a que le mal de facile à faire' (p. 142).¹⁸ It is also in this episode that sexuality first erupts. We are told that the brutal slave-owner at first disregarded the two children. 'Mais quand il eut remarqué la taille élégante de Virginie, sa belle tête blonde', he raps out an oath to pardon his slave 'non pas pour l'amour de Dieu, mais pour l'amour d'elle'. The children run away. But Paul, when they are hungry, suggests that they go back to ask for food from the slave-owner! Evidently he has no idea of the peril that the man represents. Virginie however refuses to go back (pp. 137-38). Perhaps she has.

The old narrator, who tells us of the slave-owner's lust for Virginie, could not possibly have known about it. Nor of course could he have known of Virginie's sexual crisis in her 'bain', which he wants nevertheless to recount to us. As a character in the story, it is he in fact who first causes Virginie to reveal her consciousness of her moral burden. He has been wandering round the garden, inscribing classical mottoes. Virginie, oddly, intervenes* She proposes that the motto on their little flagpole of Friendship, whose pennant rotates with the wind, should be '"Toujours agitée, mais constante"'. '"Cette devise, lui répondis-je, conviendrait encore mieux à la vertu". Ma réflexion la fit rougir' (p. 155). It is surprising that the notion of 'vertu' should be meaningful to a child who lives among the rocks (and who has never been subjected, we were told, to 'les leçons d'une triste morale': p. 128). We know that she understands it because, secondly, she immediately applies it to herself. Her reaction, thirdly, shows that she feels embarrassment if not shame or guilt. This is the first time in the narrative that she is recorded as blushing — well before the advent of her supposed 'mal'. This episode serves to establish for Virginie and for us that her womanly burden is to resist sexual desire on behalf of both sexes. In this instance it is perhaps specifically to maintain Friendship rather than Love, 'amitié' rather than 'amour'. The theme of constancy in the midst of agitation we noted at the end of the first paragraph, and it is central in this narrative. We could see the old man's intervention as just Bernardin's rather clumsy reminder; but we might also perceive in it a patriarchal recall to Virginie of the law for women.

Following the episode of the 'bain', Nature promptly confirms Virginie's infraction. A hurricane uproots the garden, leaving only the two trees. It obliterates 'le repos de Virginie'. I have just argued that 'le repos' never really existed for her. But it existed for Paul, provided by her, and through him it returned to her, until the advent of her sexual desire. Now she muses that 'Tout périt sur la terre. Il n'y a que le ciel qui ne change point'. Here 'le ciel' is evidently not 'the sky' (we abruptly drop the allegories of nature) but the Christian heaven. Paul duly replies that he wishes he could give her something from heaven. Virginie, 'en rougissant', asks for his miniature of his patron saint, Paul the Hermit. He immediately hands it over, and tries to embrace her as of old. But 'elle lui échappa, et le laissa hors de lui, ne conçevant rien à une conduite si extraordinaire' (pp. 176—77). The roles are clear. Virginie, responsible for them both, can now only seek stability ('[ce qui] ne change point') in the heavens. Paul is baffled.

Yet the crisis would seem to invite a simple solution. Paul's mother promptly proposes it. 'Cependant Marguerite disait à Madame de La Tour: "Pourquoi ne marions-nous pas nos enfants?"' Both mothers have eagerly envisaged this marriage from the start (pp. 127, 166). Moreover, Marguerite now observes, 'Ils ont l'un pour l'autre une passion extrême, dont mon fils ne s'aperçoit pas encore' (p. 178). But instead of the marriage, we have the erection of a whole series of obstacles. First La Tour objects that their offspring are 'trop jeunes et trop pauvres' (p. 178). Then a letter arrives from La Tour's aunt, offering an inheritance if she or her daughter returns to France. La Tour declines for herself, but the island's Governor arrives with a sack of money, urging her send her daughter. A priest follows in support, telling Virginie, 'C'est un sacrifice, mais c'est l'ordre de Dieu' (p. 185). La Tour is swayed by the cleric and worldly ambition. Marguerite then announces to Paul that he has no hope of marrying Virginie, because she is noble and rich, whereas 'Pour toi, tu n'es que le fils d'une pauvre paysanne, et, qui pis est, tu es bâtard' (p. 189). Paul is appropriately astonished, but starts addressing Virginie as 'Mademoiselle' (ρ. 191). The two hold an anguished colloquy, and Paul denounces his mother for making them part. His plea however is not prospective but regressive, not in terms of a future marriage but of a primary familial bond. 'Vous qui séparez le frère d'avec la sœur! Tous deux nous avons sucé votre lait' (p. 193). Virginie avows to him that he is to her 'beaucoup plus qu'un frère', and swears that she will eventually be his. La Tour, overwhelmed, says 'Ce malheureux voyage n'aura pas lieu' (p. 195). The old man takes Paul home with him. But early next morning — at this point the narrative breaks — Paul returns to find that Virginie has gone! The wind had risen during the night, and the Governor had taken her to the ship which sailed immediately (p. 198).

The account of the process of separation is not only laborious. It presents a 'chaos [...] of motives and opinions'.19 Such incoherence confirms that what matters here is not motivation but function: preventing the marriage.²⁰ Paul's absence at the decisive moment when Virginie is carried off (like Saint-Preux's systematic absence when Julie faces crises) seems curiously convenient. We should observe however that her departure is precipitated by a force in the natural world. 'Le vent s'étant levé [...]' even uses again the active verb. Then we are told that Paul espies the ship, already far away, from a mountain exposed to the same wind. 'Ce lieu sauvage [est] toujours battu des vents qui y agitent sans cesse les sommets des palmistes et des tatamaques. Leur murmure sourd et mugissant ressemble au bruit lointain des orgues, et inspire une profonde mélancolie' (p. 198). The last clause unnecessarily spells out the significance of this magnificent natural orchestration of Virginie's departure: ceaseless agitation, and a distant diapason of aeolian doom.

French Society

Now that Paul and Virginie are separated, in order to communicate with each other they must learn to read and write.²¹ This is in some sense part of their encounter with European civilization. French society is presented in two sequences: first through Virginie, then in relation to Paul. The former centres on a letter from Virginie in Paris to her mother at home. We are told that the Parisian aunt considers Virginie's familial upbringing — which has taught her to 'avoir soin d'un ménage' and do her mother's bidding — as suitable only for a servant. Instead she is being taught a range of attainments, from mathematics to riding. This opposed cursus we might consider admirably broad, but we are presumably meant to regard it as gratuitous sophistication. Virginie has been required to renounce her mother's married name, and given the title of Countess — again an attack on family values, again in favour of false sophistication and female independence. Though surrounded by luxury, Virginie has no money of her own, so she is unable to give alms. Happily though she can still ply her needle, and she sends home useful knitwear to her mother — interpellated still as 'bien-aimée maman', not the ladylike 'madame' — and the family (pp. 203—05). Thus her letter functions to bring into confrontation the bad ways of the French aristocracy (female education and autonomy; general artificiality, privilege and excess) and the new ethos of bourgeois domesticity for women. Virginie's present to Paul is '[d]es semences dans une petite bourse', embroidered with her own hair (p. 207)! This startlingly erotic emblem is however (like the eggs and fruit) also innocently organic. Paul devoutly plants Virginie's seeds, but they fail to grow — Symbolizing one might Say their sterile sexual relationship as well as the incompatibility of metropolitan French 'végétaux' with the nature of their island.

Paul on his side wants to learn about Virginie's new abode, and starts reading French novels. Alas they treat inconstancy as amusing, and Paul knows that 'ces livres renfermaient des peintures assez fidèles des mœurs de l'Europe'. The old narrator, who is the source of Paul's 'knowledge', piously reflects that 'ses lumières le rendaient déjà malheureux' (p. 208). He then presents us with a set-piece dialogue about France, purportedly illustrating Paul's 'boil sens'. In fact Paul's contributions are mainly cues for the old man to hold forth. The lad is told that 'le défaut de naissance vous ferme en France le chemin aux grands emplois'. But, says Paul, you spoke of 'beaucoup d'hommes célèbres, qui, sortis des petits états, avaient fait honneur à leur patrie'. The old man replies that this was true 'autrefois': but today the royal sun is surrounded by the clouds of'les grands et les corps' (p. 217). Indeed, 'la vertu, sans nos rois, serait condamnée en France à être éternellement plébéienne' (p. 218). Anyway, Paul should be satisfied to 'remplir votre devoir dans l'état où la Providence vous à mis' (p. 219). Sketched in this dialogue is a broad moral and political condemnation of contemporary French society.22 On social mobility we encounter apparent ambivalence. It is disapproved, as in our previous novels, though now with a stronger Christian inflection ('la Providence'). This is seemingly belied by the invocation of the good old days when men could 'sorti[r] des petits états'. But clearly those men were not motivated by personal ambition, nor did they even 'rise' in our modern individualist sense. They are celebrated for their service to 'la patrie', Expressed here in fact is the new ethos of patriotism. Its roots are indeed in the long alliance to which the speaker alludes, between 'nos rois' and the '[classe] plébéienne'. It represents civic 'vertu' — and excludes the aristocracy. Its future is the collectivist values of the Revolution, still royalist but soon to become explicitly republican.

We saw that both Zilia and Saint-Preux, while criticizing French society, placed a high value on books. The old man takes this tendency further. He is by no means consistent, telling Paul initially that authorship is both thankless and useless (p. 220). Yet he then radically reverses his position. 'C'est à ces mêmes livres qu'il est réservé particulièrement à donner de l'éclat à la vertu obscure, de consoler les malheureux, d'éclairer les nations, et de dire la vérité même aux rois' (p. 222)! More broadly, 'les lettres sont [...] des rayons de cette sagesse qui gouverne l'univers' (p. 229). Elements of old humanism blend here with a touch of the solar myth voiced by Zilia, and with newer ingredients: sentimentalism, self-communion, and a hint of the Romantic idea of the legislative power of the pen. Though 'les romans' have just been denounced, they too are also celebrated. We are told that Paul, shocked by reading modern history, 'préférait à cette lecture celle des romans, qui [...| lui offraient quelquefois des situations pareilles à la sienne. Aussi aucun livre ne lui fit autant de plaisir que le Télémaque, par ses tableaux de la vie champêtre et des passions naturelles au cœur humain' (p. 201). This characterization of course fits Bernardin's own composition too.²³ On the status of 'le roman' the contradiction is only apparent, because the same term covers idealized representations of distant worlds (Fénelon's Greek antiquity, Bernardin's tropical island) as well as the opposed 'realist' novels of contemporary European corruption. The ideal pole of this opposition is associated by Bernardin with each of his protagonists. Virginie reports that when she finally rejected the aunt's plans 'elle en avait été traité de fille insensée, dont la tête était gâtée par les romans' (p. 232). The unlikelihood of the accusation serves to highlight its terms: Parisian social ambition versus the romances. Paul has already complained that 'dans ces livres [français] qui peignent si bien les femmes, la vertu n'est qu'un sujet de roman' (p. 228). Again the formulation is strained. It says that in French novels, and for the women that they depict, virtue is a quality found only in fiction.24 On the one hand is the real (Parisian society, modern history, realist novels); on the other is the fiction which represents the ideal.

Redemption, and the Body

Virginie has been dismissed by the odious aunt and put on a ship home. But having almost reached the island the vessel is caught in its reefs as a hurricane strikes. Virginie refuses to disrobe to save herself, and she is drowned. This famous literary death offers much material for the present argument. Destruction results from leaving the safe haven of the island. Or, we could say, from the woman leaving home. Once again the forces of nature, and particularly the winds, preside over the characters. For Virginie, we should recall, this is the second hurricane and the second immersion. The first saw her naked in her pool, overcome, despite herself, with sexual desire; then came the literal eradication of her 'repos' by the elemental storm. Now in reverse order we have the elemental storm, and her decision to remain clothed, which brings death by water. The latter event redeems the former. Better, a private offence against virtue is redeemed by a public and exemplary act, for Virginie's choice is witnessed by all those on the shore.

What they and the narrator see specifically is almost all the crew leaping from the doomed ship into the water, while Virginie remains on the upper deck. She is 'tendant les bras' to Paul who has rushed from the shore into the huge waves to try to rescue her. Still with Virginie on the ship is just one sailor, described as 'tout nu, et nerveux comme Hercule', 'Il s'approcha de Virginie avec respect: nous le vîmes se jeter à ses genoux, et s'efforçer même de lui ôter ses habits; mais elle, le repoussant avec dignité, détourna de lui sa vue.''The spectators cry 'Sauvez-la'. But a mountain of water comes roaring down on the ship, and he jumps. 'Virginie, voyant la mort inévitable, posa une main sur ses habits, l'autre sur son cœur, et levant en haut des yeux sereins, parut un ange qui prend son vol vers les deux' (pp. 240-41). The role of the sailor reflects that, much earlier, of the runaway slave. She too was one of the wretched, was almost naked, and 'se jeta aux pieds de Virginie' (p. 136). Virginie tried to succour her, as the sailor now tries to rescue Virginie. Their shared gesture of spontaneous genuflexion recognizes Virginie's angelic status. She casts her eyes upwards, and the narrator invites us to perceive her as taking her flight (at last) to the heavens.

Virginie's death is the consequence of her refusal to undress, constituting a deliberate and admirable moral choice. This proposition is implicit here, promptly confirmed by the sailor (p. 242), and later forcefully summarized: '[elle a] mieux aimé perdre la vie que de violer la pudeur' (p. 258). The account just cited emphasizes the gravity of the transaction: 'avec respect', 'avec dignité', 'sereins'. Such insistence however also invites our closer attention to the event. Virginie's averted gaze when confronted by the stripped Hercules can be interpreted less spiritually. Her essential decision, choosing nemesis rather than nudity, is morally absurd. We might perceive in the careful placing of her hands a gesture of sexual self-protection, symbolic of her refusal not so much to Violer' as to be 'viol[ée]'.25 We know that she cannot marry Paul, for several reasons: her permanent aspiration to heaven, her sexual guilt, all the earlier efforts to postpone their marriage, simply her name. Therefore she must die. Her serenity suggests that she wants to die.

Virginie's death is literally iconic. We have the expressive and symbolic pose as the wave overwhelms her. We have the audience, which is also a tragic chorus with its commentaries and cries, watching the terrible spectacle and its necessary end. Her death-pose is exhibited to them, in one dramatic moment. But its significance is confirmed by the way that her body is then literally fixed in that pose. Her corpse is found later in the sand of a bay nearer home. We are told that Virginie (despite having been battered by giant waves, then swept many miles), is still 'dans l'attitude où nous l'avions vue périr'. Thus epiphany becomes iconography. Clutched m the hand that is over her heart is Paul's miniature. But the portrait (another icon) is of Paul the Hermit — a further confirmation that she cannot marry him. The old man weeps at 'cette dernière marque de la constance et de l'amour de cette fille infortunée' (p. 243). Love is what she feels for Paul; but constancy, which comes first, is the mark of virtue. 'Nous ne sommes sur la terre que pour exercer la vertu', said her mother (p. 175). But the old narrator declares that this condition is unsustainable. 'La vertu, repris-je, toujours égale* constante, invariable, n'est pas le partage de l'homme' (p. 229). Virginie has struggled long enough. At last she attains moral fixity, which is rendered as quite literal fixity.

'C'est un sacrifice; mais c'est l'ordre de Dieu' said the priest (p. 185). In certain respects Virginie's death is linked to Christ. She dies on the day following 24 December (see p. 231). Her body is taken to 'une cabane de pêcheurs, où nous le donnâmes à garder à de pauvres femmes malabares, qui prirent soin de le laver' (p. 243). Fishing, handmaidens and ritual washing have Biblical resonances, while taking us back to the dispossessed, now given a specific ethnic dimension. This prepares Bernardin's marvellous sequence on the obsequies. The Governor orders that Virginie's body be brought to 'la ville', to be carried for burial at 'l'église des Pamplemousses'. At the former the communities gather, 'comme si l'île eût perdu en elle ce quelle avait de plus cher'. Formal observation includes lowered flags in the harbour and the firing of canons. The coffin is followed by soldiers with drums, maidens in white waving palm fronds, and a choir of children, then the Governor and the 'peuple'. But as the cortège passes the mountain, 'toute la pompe funèbre fut dérangée', as the people take over. Weeping girls touch Virginie's coffin with their handkerchiefs and garlands, 'en l'invoquant comme une sainte'. 'Les mères demandaient à Dieu une fille comme elle; les garçons, des amantes aussi constantes; les pauvres, une amie aussi tendre; les esclaves, une maîtresse aussi bonne.' At the place of burial, negresses from Madagascar place baskets of fruit around her and strew cloths on the trees, 'suivant l'usage de leur pays'. Indians from Bengal bring 'des cages pleins d'oiseaux, auxquels elles donnèrent la liberté sur son corps'. Thus 'la vertu malheureuse' moves all nations and unites all religions, concludes Bernardin (pp. 246-47). What precedes this sententious closure however is rather more interesting.

Virginie's body is borne in collective procession from the human city ('la ville') to the place of both inhumation and transcendence ('l'église'). Official observance by the civic order gives way to the grief of the people. Each constituency of love or suffering (mothers, lovers, the poor, the enslaved) finds in Virginie their own ideal. On the way, popular Christianity is manifested in spontaneous beatification and material devotions. At the burial, the Christian rite is accompanied by the rituals of other cultures and their subject peoples. But what the dispossessed women offer at Virginie's grave are also what we saw to be the natural emblems of her own first innocence: fruit and birds. Bernardin has brought the official down to the popular, and then combined the transcendent with the immanent: Christianity and popular cults, ascent and devotional objects, holiness and nature, the soul's flight symbolized by the birds whose cages are placed on her body. Virginie's sainthood at once elevates her to heaven and brings her down to oneness with the earth and its people.

Virginie is buried near the Pamplemousses church 'au pied d'une touffe de bambous' (the spiritual and the vegetal). This we are told is the spot where, on the way to mass, 'elle aimait à se reposer, assise à côté de celui qu'elle appelait alors son frère' (p. 248): repose belongs with the sibling relationship. The old man, having sought in vain to assuage the grief of Paul, finds the two mothers 'dans un état de langueur' (p. 260). Both dream that Virginie clothed in white is calling them to her. Everyone affirms that life is suffering, and death is best.26 Paul dies. Domingue and Marie die. The family dog dies. La Tour dies. All are buried next to Virginie by the bamboos (a group symbolized by a grove). The old narrator suggests that their shades wander among the poor, encouraging and consoling them. Their monuments we will consider later.

The Naïvety of Paul

Of the couple, Virginie is the one who knows, the one who is strong and who carries the guilt. Paul remains incomprehending and thus innocent. His relationship to Virginie is a childish version of that of Saint-Preux to Julie. As in the case of Saint-Preux, others conspire to protect Paul from knowledge. 'Cache ton amour à Paul', Mme de La Tour tells Virginie (p. 185). The real reasons for trying to separate this couple are 'des motifs queje n'osais même faire soupçonner à Paul', says the old narrator (p. 180). But Paul's naivety, unlike that of Saint-Preux, does not require bad faith. The nearest that he ever gets to the expression of erotic desire is in his lyric utterance to Virginie at the end of the childhood section. But if he evokes her 'corsage', it is to liken it to that of a mother partridge hastening to its nest (birds, home, mother). If he asks 'par quel charme tu as pu m'enchanter', it is to answer beatifically, 'je crois que c'est par ta bonté' (pp. 170-71). Until this point his world is stable, closed, and essentially unproblematic. However, once Virginie is seized with her 'mal', he will be baffled by her conduct. Required by her departure for France to learn about high civilization, he does little better. Despite questioning the old man and reading widely, he continues to make the most foolish assumptions (for example, that valour or erudition would bring him recognition, or that love determines marriage: pp. 218—20, 224). He seems unable to form a coherent idea of Europe. His failure to understand either sexuality or society is genuine. He remains as he is described in the last line of the first section: 'ayant la taille d'un homme, avec la simplicité d'un enfant' (p. 170).

Paul is physically active and courageous, but morally weak. His dependence on Virginie is nicely encapsulated during the Rivière Noire episode when he says to her 'Je me sens bien fort avec toi' (p. 141). Once he loses her stability, he is lost. As with Saint-Preux, separation from the beloved prompts a certain paranoia. 'Etonné des conversations secrètes de Mme de La Tour et de sa fille, [Paul] s'abandonnait à une tristesse sombre. On trame quelque chose contre moi, dit-il, puisqu'on se cache de moi' (p. 186). As with Saint-Preux, his response to emotional crisis is to offer to die. At what turns out to be their parting interview, he first affirms to Virginie that he will follow her to Paris 'pour te faire le plus grand des sacrifices, en mourant à tes pieds'. Then, no less hysterically, he promises to anticipate the event by swimming after her ship, until 'je mourrai sous ses yeux' (pp. 192-93). Disturbed by her protracted absence, he will wish for a war in India so that he can die there (p. 228). Sometimes, however, he doubts Virginie's fidelity. We are told that, having read novels about France, 'il craignit que la fille de Mme de La Tour lle vînt à s'y Corrompre et à oublier ses anciens engagements' (p. 208). He wishes to die in a war not only because he believes rumours that she has married but also because he blames her. 'L'amour des richesses l'a perdue [...]. Si Virginie avait eu de la vertu, elle n'aurait pas quitté sa propre mère et moi. [...] Je m'afflige, et elle se divertit' (p. 228). Here distress turns briefly into hostility.

Paul's mistrust however seems to be shared by the old narrator. In the story, it was the old man who first made Virginie blush by his reference to virtue. After her death it is he who says to Paul consolingly that had they married, poverty might have made her unfaithful: 'ou elle eût été faible, et vous eussiez été à plaindre' (p. 253). As narrator, using free indirect style, he reports Paul's views in language which seems to be also his own. The descriptions of Virginie's new behaviour that we quoted earlier—'des caprices [...] si étranges', 'une conduite si extraordinaire' — are quite unkind. Yet the narrator understands her behaviour. He is able to generalize about it, remarking that 'une jeune fille qui aime, croit que tout le monde l'ignore' (p. 184). He understands Virginie because he knows about women. This we see again when he tells us of Paul's naivety with regard to Virginie's letter. 'Paul fut bien étonné de ce que Virginie ne parlait pas du tout de lui [...]. Mais il ne savait pas que, quelque longue que soit la lettre d'une femme, elle n'y met jamais sa pensée la plus chère qu'à la fin' (p. 206). Thus Bernardin contrives to have his masculmist cake and to eat it as well: Paul's innocence with regard to the strangeness of the female sex is complemented by the narrator's master discourse. The latter is tenderly sentimental, but very reductionist. It is accompanied by something like misogyny.27 We recall the narrator's curious affirmation about the two mothers: 'si d'anciens feux plus vifs que l'amitié se réveillaient dans leur âme, une religion pure, aidée par des mœurs chastes, les dirigeait vers [...] le ciel' (p. 126). Women should be spiritual creatures, but they are still sexual creatures. Like mothers, like daughter. It is Virginie whose desire brings the sexual 'mal' into the Edenic relationship with Paul. To be true to her name, she must die. Paul is named for Termite Paul', and he actually resembles 'ce bienheureux solitaire' (p. 177). His patron and guide, the old man, already lives 'seul, sans femme', in what he calls 'mon ermitage' (pp. 209, 212). Like spiritual father, like spiritual son: an example of celibacy for those women.

Other characteristics assigned to Paul are a certain androgyny and a hint of rebellion. We were told that at twelve or thirteen he has 'la taille d'un homme'. But the only specific description that we have, at about the same age, gives a different emphasis. Following the portrait of Virginie, which attended most closely to her gaze (oblique, melancholic), it gives similar importance to Paul's eyes. 'Ses yeux qui étaient noirs auraient eu un peu de fierté, si les longs cils qui rayonnaient autour comme des pinceaux, ne leur avaient donné la plus grande douceur' (p. 131). The strong young man is assigned sweeping eyelashes and the most gentle expression, which feminize him. But his dark eyes (presumably smouldering within the thicket around them), also imply 'un peu de fierté'. Paul will in fact quickly fire up. At the aunt's first unkind letter all the women weep; but 'Paul, les yeux enflammés de colère, criait, serrait les poings, frappait du pied, ne sachant à qui s'en prendre' (p. 135). A primary sensibility, he exhibits emotion through his body, but his mind is not capable of giving it direction and it rapidly disperses. At the moonlit final interview with Virginie, he almost explodes. 'Ses yeux étincelaient; la sueur coulait à grosse gouttes sur son visage; ses genoux tremblaient' and so oïl. But 'comme le soleil fond et précipite un rocher de glace du sommet des Appenins, ainsi tombait la colère impétueuse de ce jeune homme' (p. 194). He quickly subsides back into helplessness.

Whereas Samt-Preux felt increasingly obliged to attain a version of social virtue, Paul goes the other way. Without Virginie's strength, he turns increasingly passive and morose. The lengthy instruction that he receives during the 'dialogue' with the old man, on France and on virtue, has no perceivable effect. After Virginie's death he becomes almost catatonic, occasionally crying out or fainting with emotion (pp. 250, 252, 260), but mainly indifferent to everything. Further moralizing from the old man impinges not one whit. Paul nourishes his own grief, and dies of it, with the perfect self-absorption of the Romantics. He has previously rejected the preferred hand of the Governor ('Paul retira la sienne, et détourna la tête pour ne le pas voir': p. 248), in a gesture of Romantic refusal if not rebellion.

Vision and Writing

The protagonists of our previous two novels made a cult of what were called 'douces illusions'. These were images of another and better human order (amorous or communitarian), lacking in present reality and sought by desire. For Zilia however the lack was almost total; and her discourse of the ideal did not go far beyond the pathos of wishes. Rousseau takes us much further. His lovers initially had each other, and then they were to differing degrees part of a better community, though this too failed to satisfy. Drawing on the divine model within their hearts, they knew what should be. But it is Bernardin who integrates these elements. He establishes his protagonists in a good order, which is that of the natural world. It still transcends the human, but now it is also immanent. 'Tout ce qui les environnait,' we are told, '[était] un temple divin' (p. 161). We move from the illusion of what should be to the visionary understanding of what is.

Taking first a topos already established, we have another version of the universal language. Towards the end of the childhood section we learn that Paul and Virginie in celebration of'le bonheur de la vie champêtre' sometimes performed 'des chants et des danses'. Specific attention however is given to their mimes. 'La pantomime est le premier langage de l'homme; elle est connue de toutes les nations', affirms the narrator. 'Elle est si naturelle et si expressive, que les enfants des Blancs ne tardent pas à l'apprendre, dès qu'ils ont vu ceux des Noirs s'y exercer' (p. 164). Mime is linked with rhythmic accompaniment (as dance with music), for their performance is is supported by 'le tam-tam de Domingue'. The idea of a natural language of human expression is nicely tied in with the circumstances of the little community. From 'les lectures que lui faisait sa mère', Virginie chooses for enactment 'les histoires qui l'avaient le plus touchée'. These are Old Testament tales, such as that of Ruth and Boas, which centre on exile and hospitality. They recall for Mme de La Tour her own history, a memory which in turn 'nous faisait verser à tous des larmes de douleur et de joie' (pp. 165-66). Illustrated here is the power of stories to reflect our human experience (as Téiémaque will be said to offer Paul situations and sentiments like his own). What the narrator calls 'ces drames' combine the truths of Judeo-Christianity and local culture, of antiquity and today; of patriarchy and pastoral, sentiment and human solidarity. In turn they bring together performers and audience, all moved by a single collective feeling.

Quite new however is the way that the human ritual is framed and shown forth by the power of nature itself. 'Nous ne manquions pas de décorations, d'illuminations et d'orchestre convenables à ce spectacle', says the narrator:

Le lieu de la scène était, pour l'ordinaire, au carrefour d'une forêt, dont les percées formaient autour de nous plusieurs arcades de feuillage. [...] quand le soleil était descendu à l'horizon, ses rayons brisés par les troncs des arbres, divergeaient dans les ombres de la forêt, en longues gerbes lumineuses, qui produisaient le plus majestueux effet. Quelquefois son disque tout entier paraissait à l'extrémité d'une avenue, et la rendait tout étincelante de lumière. Le feuillage des arbres éclairé en dessous de ses rayons Saffranés, brillait des feux de la topaze et de l'éméraude. Leurs troncs mousseux et bruns paraissaient changés en colonnes de bronze antique, et les oiseaux déjà retirés en silence sous la sombre feuillée, pour y passer la nuit, surpris de revoir une seconde aurore, Saluaient tous à la fois l'astre du jour par mille et mille chansons, (p. 166)

The enactment of perennial human truth takes place within the forest, at the central point of converging arcades. We may recall that the church of the Pamplemousses, described in the incipit, was marked by green avenues. Nature's mystic geometry then offered another form of focus. The rays of the sun at its vertical point illuminated the 'bassin'; at the horizontal they lit the mountain peaks. Here the visionary beams themselves are exhibited ('rayons brisés', 'longues gerbes'), before they more fully transform and reveal what they strike. Light from the vertical disc suffuses a horizontal shaft in the wood. In the incipit it displayed gold, purple and azure; here we have saffron, topaz and emerald. The latter are also rare objects (exotic spice and precious stones). As the leaves are transformed into gems, so the tree trunks seem changed into pillars of ancient bronze. The foliage is illuminated from beneath — as if by a chthonic power. The roosting birds emerge astonished from beneath to salute the sun with an explosion of song. Nature's 'lumière et son' (so to speak) exhibits its own order which is wondrous as well as good.28 The family spectacle is only a small though literally central element within it (like the cabins within the 'bassin').

The life of the little group is also integrated with the greater order in other ways. They themselves give moral signification to their daily surroundings through naming. 'Ce rocher [...] d'où l'on me voyait venir de bien loin,' says the old narrator, 's'appelait la Découverte de l'amitié'. The tree where La Tour and Marguerite first met is called 'les Pleurs essuyées'. The circle of greenery in which the children dance is baptized 'la Concorde', and of course there is 'le Repos de Virginie'. Each of the adults names an appropriate part of the agricultural domain after their own origin. Beds of North European vegetables become Bretagne (for Marguerite) and Normandie (La Tour), while more tropical plantations are Angola (Domingue) and Foullepointe (Marie). 'Ainsi, par ces productions de leurs climats, ces familles expatriées entretenaient les douces illusions de leurs pays' (pp. 153-56).²⁹ The function of naming is as in the previous cases. The 'lieux-dits' of the group's environment carry for them a shared pattern of moral meaning which reflects their own lives.

This modest system (oral and private) is complemented by another drawn from written public language. The little flagpole on 'la Découverte' (itself a modest transposition of the public signal evoked in the incipit) prompts the old man. 'L'idée me vint de graver une inscription sur la tige de ce roseau.' There follows (as with the 'pantomime') a piece of philosophical moralizing. 'Quelque plaisir que j'aie eu dans mes voyages à voir une statue ou un monument de l'Antiquité, j'en ai encore davantage à voir une inscription bien faite, Il me semble alors qu'une voix humaine sorte de la pierre.' It reminds us 'à travers les siècles' of our shared humanity, or of our personal immortality The old man duly inscribes on the mast several lines of Latin poetry from Horace (quoted and set out in the text). These verses, requesting the protection of twinned stars and the father of the winds, are evidently applicable to Paul and Virginie, A tree is incised with a verse from Virgil celebrating the pastoral life. The entrance to La Tour's cabin is adorned with another line from the Georgics (pp. 153-55). The whole undertaking is odd, for no one in the little group knows Latin (in fact only La Tour can read at all). Clearly this exercise is symbolic. It seems to follow the same principle as the practice of naming attributed to the family: that of locating permanent truths in our daily world. In the case of Latin quotation however permanence extends to the formulation itself (both 'bien faite' as language, and transmitted unchanged from antiquity). Most importantly, it is extended to the physical form, as utterance becomes incision or raised letters — literally writing-on-the-world. We saw however that antique inscription was likened to 'une voix humaine qui Sort [...] de la pierre'. Permanent writing is assigned the power of speech not only in stone but from stone.

The narratorial account of the mothers, and then principally of the children, assimilated them in various ways to the organic world. We have just seen how the family's immediate environment acquires moral signification: for them by their practice of naming natural objects for events in their own shared life, and for us by the old man's inscription of classical verses on daily artefacts. That intimate life becomes more public as Virginie through her good deeds and then her voyage becomes more widely known. The Governor and a crowd on the beach witness her exemplary death. Her funeral is organized by the establishment, but it is attended by the whole population, 'comme si l'île eût perdu en elle ce quelle avait de plus cher', and then taken over by the popular classes. The rest of her family soon join her almost literally, for they are buried 'auprès de Virginie, au pied des mêmes roseaux'. The narrator continues 'on n'a point élevé de marbres sur leurs humbles tertres, ni gravé d'inscriptions à leurs vertus; mais leur mémoire est restée ineffaçable dans le cœur de ceux qu'ils ont obligés'. This is less a repudiation of marmoreal writing than of privileged pomp, and it marks a further stage of the family's assumption into the island. On the one hand their spirits may remain with the community of those who feel and suffer: 'leurs ombres [...] sans doute [...] aiment à errer sous les toits de chaume qu'habite la vertu laborieuse, à consoler [...]'. On the other Virginie's story has been built into the world. 'La voix du peuple, qui se tait sur les monuments élevés à la gloire des rois, a donné à quelques parties de cette île des noms qui éterniseront la perte de Virginie.' These places are la passe du Saint-Géran where the ship was wrecked, le cap Malheureux, and la baie du Tombeau where her body was found (pp. 265—66). Virginie is memorialized forever in the communal landscape.30 Here the 'bon vieillard' concludes his narrative. That narrative is itself the spoken monument to Virginie and her relation with the island; it is fixed in the writing of the second narrator which we read.

A weakness of Paul et Virginie for many readers is that the main characters are very limited. The mothers are genuinely simple. Involuntary exiles from their birthplace, they feel a certain sense of loss, and in La Tour's case a residual class ambition. But they are in the main placidly content with their family life in their island shelter. As for the children, this closed and harmonious world is where they belong. Even when sexuality and society impinge, the youngsters do not grow up. Virginie's moral life becomes more complicated ('contre elle-même'; unhappy in Paris) but she is never given the capacity to take a reflexive or critical distance. Paul's rebellions remain primary and momentary; he does not understand anything. But this lack of complexity or individuation is essential to meaning. Philosophically or poetically it shows that the children remain part of the familial and natural order. In literary terms it turns the narrative away from the particularity and interiority of the novel towards the general truth of traditional genres (tale, romance, pastoral, fable). In all these respects it means that signification is conferred principally by the discourse of the narrator.³¹ This brings us to the work's second major weakness, which is the narrator's endless and often fatuous moralizing, albeit chiefly in his diegetic role as Paul's counsellor. But the narratorial discourse also gives the work its power. This resides less in any explicit thematizing of meaning than in the use of description, particularly of the natural world, to convey a visionary apprehension.

To examine Bernardin's writing, consider a sentence at the start of the account of Paul's work in the garden:

'Il y avait semé des graines d'arbres, qui, dès la seconde année portent des fleurs ou des fruits, tels que l'agati, où pendent tout autour, comme les cristaux d'un lustre, de longues grappes de fleurs blanches; le lilas de Perse, qui élève droit en l'air ses girandoles gris de lin; le papayer, dont le tronc sans branches, formé en colonne hérissée de melons verts, porte un chapiteau de larges feuilles semblables à celle du figuier, (p. 150).

The botanic descriptions are largely accurate, and they do not differ much from their non-literary versions.32 But in the present fictional and mystical framework the language offers further levels of meaning. Fundamentally we have the idea of a vegetable fecundity which is rapid, productive and rich. Nature (in the present tense of permanence) is assisted here by a child, bracketing two kinds of innocent growth. The flowers and fruits are nevertheless strongly eroticized, mainly by notations of heaviness and curvature ('portent', 'pendent tout autour', 'hérissé', 'porte'; 'longues', 'larges'; 'grappes', 'melons'). The phallic is not absent ('élève droit en l'air', 'colonne'), but is almost literally outweighed by lushiiess. Sexuality is diffused. And the erections themselves are assimilated to two very different atavistic forms. On the one hand the pawpaw suggests a primitive, many-breasted goddess. On the other it evokes a severe column with its capital (antique but also Greek-Revivalist or neo-classical — sparely Hellenic or grandly Roman). In the same way, the bloom of the agathis is both fleshy flower clusters and the hard crystals of a chandelier (echoed in the 'girandoles' of the lilac). Bernardin's writing while attending closely to everyday natural objects suggests figuratively the permanent forms and truths (goddess, column, crystal) that they exhibit.

This epiphanic vision not only shows but refines and fixes. It is regressive in looking for antique or pure forms, and in wanting to turn the organic into something unvarying if not eternal. An early description of the children seated together offers a striking example. A leur silence, à la naïveté de leurs attitudes, à la beauté de leurs pieds nus, on eût cru voir un groupe antique de marbre blanc' (p. i.u). Paul and Virginie become a statuary group in the style of Canova: smoothed and pale, androgynous, unselfconscious and perfect. We recall how the trees, illuminated by the setting sun through the clearing, 'paraissaient changés en colonnes de bronze antique'. Metaphor does a similar job in the description of the pawpaw, as it will when 'des bosquets de palmistes élèvent ça et là leurs colonnes nues' (p. 213). Column and statue are implicitly brought together, to transform the everyday, in one extraordinary image. Virginie watches her goats 'brouter les capillaires sur les flancs escarpés de la roche, et se tenir en l'air sur une de ses corniches, comme sur un piédestal' (p. 158). As the animal has been domesticated (and the proverbially ruttish, we noted, made lacteous), so the nimble has been frozen and is exhibited in equipoise. The significance of the image of the statue is indicated more fully in another remarkable analogy. Antique excellence, says the old man, has often been disfigured subsequently, but it may still reach us whole. 'La gloire de quelques-uns [des anciens] est venue nette et pure jusqu'à nous'; 'ceux qui [...] ont vécu loin de la société [sont] semblables à ces statues qu'on tire entières des champs de la Grèce et de l'Italie, et qui, pour avoir été ensevelies dans le sein de la terre, ont échappé à la fureur des barbares' (p. 221). The recent fashion of archaeology, another aspect of neo-classicism, is turned brilliantly by Bernardin towards his own mythical meaning. The truth is 'clean and pure' and marmoreal. The glory of the ancients (or the ancient glory) is still with us, but it is hidden. It has been preserved, safe from time and violence, in the bosom of mother earth. It is waiting to be shown forth.

Virginie herself was safely hidden in the rocky womb of the island, till she was unearthed and brought into the world to face its trials. 'Dieu donne à la vertu tous les événements de la vie à supporter', the old man tells Paul. 'Quand il lui réserve une réputation illustre, il l'élève sur un grand théâtre, et la met aux prises avec la mort; alors son courage sert d'exemple, et le souvenir de ses malheurs reçoit à jamais un tribut de larmes de la postérité. Voilà le monument immortel qui lui est réservé' (p. 256). Virginie's death was exemplary and public. Despite the fury of the hurricane, her body was drawn from the sea undamaged, fixed in its pose like a statue. At her burial she is adopted by the whole community, whose collective voice makes her part of the landscape. Like the rest of her family, she does not develop, but rather she returns.

Cycle and equilibrium are the universal order for Bernardin. His narrative itself has little development. The long first section on Paul and Virginie's childhood is almost static; similarly the later sections devoted mainly to Paul and the old man. Motifs are repeated, and elements mirrored.33 The narrator breaks off just once, halfway through the story, at the moment of Virginie's departure from the island. Should he continue? 'Il n'y a jamais qu'un côté agréable à connaître dans la vie humaine. Semblable au globe sur lequel nous tournons, notre révolution rapide n'est que d'un jour, et une partie de ce jour ne peut recevoir la lumière, que l'autre ne soit livrée aux ténèbres' (p. 196). Evidently the 'partie' still to come is the dark half. But Paul has just been told 'il est minuit', which suggests not day and night but two days. It is then affirmed that 'les images du bonheur nous plaisent, mais celles du malheur nous instruisent' (p. 196). This is more like equilibrium. As the narrator asserts elsewhere, 'la nature a tout balancé' (p. 226). Virginie in her 'malheur' complained that 'tout change sur la terre'. But our 'révolution' is a cycle. In death, which we were told is the greatest good, she is fixed in human memory and the island's topography.

Notes to Chapter 3

1. 'La terre est couverte partout de rochers'; 'Tout ici me paraît bien inférieur à nos productions de l'Europe'; 'la discorde règne dans toutes les classes'; as to the treatment of the slave population, 'ma plume se lasse d'écrire ces horreurs': Voyage à l'île de France, ed. by Yves Benot, (Paris: La Découverte/Maspero, 1983), Letters 7, 11, 12; pp. 75, 78, 111, 120.

2. Jean-Michel Racault, in the 'Introduction' to his edition of Paul et Virginie (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1999), p. 10. All references will be to this edition, which uses the text from the work's first separate publication (1789), rather than that of 1806 adopted by most modern editors.

3. By 1799 at least 56 editions (including translations) had appeared: ibid., p. 41.

4. 'Cette espèce de pastorale'; 'cette pastorale' (paratexts of 1788, 1789 and 1806): ibid., pp. 94, 99, 268. On the renewal of this genre in the decade of the Revolution, see Racault, 'Pastorale et roman dans Paul et Virginie', in Etudes sur 'Paul et Virginie', ed. by Jean-Michel Racault (Paris: Publications de l'Université de La Réunion, 1986), pp. 177—200.

5. Rather as Bernardin's Etudes de la nature first subsumed Paul et Virginie.

6. As Jean Fabre drily observes, 'on doit être très jeune dans la pastorale, à moins qu'on n'y soit très vieux': 'Paul et Virginie, pastorale', collected in Lumières et Romantisme (Paris: Klincksieck, 1980), pp. 225-57 (p. 248).

7. We note the use of 's'élève' here, as with the mountain. One need only substitute in either case, say, 'est située', to perceive that in the present context the choice of verb implies that the object itself exhibits a spiritual aspiration.

8. Significantly, the only topographical element in the first paragraph which is invented by Bernardin, apart from the cabins in the 'bassin', is the avenues of the church. See Philip Robinson, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: 'Paul et Virginie' (London: Grant & Cutler, 1986), p. 17.

9. The point is made by J.-M. Racault, 'Ouverture et cloture dans Paul et Virginie', in Racault, ed., Etudes, pp. 83—102 (p. 93). His excellent close analysis of the first three paragraphs of the work does not however take account of the visionary dimension.

10. Later, in a rare textual note, Bernardin will spell out the significance of his language. 'Il y a beaucoup de montagnes dont les sommets sont arrondis en forme de mamelles [...]. Elles sont les sources des principaux fleuves qui l'arrosent [= la terre], et elles fournissent constamment à leurs eaux en attirant sans cesse les nuages autour du piton de rocher qui les surmonte à leur centre comme un mamelon' (p. 141).

11. The parallel is made, at the start of a suggestive reading of the work in relation to the politics of the family, by Roddey Reid, Families in Jeopardy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), ch. 3.

12. We recall Bernardin likening mountains to breasts which give liquid nourishment. One might also however perceive in this scene a resemblance to religious paintings such as Leonardo's 'Madonna of the Rocks', providing once more the Christian dimension. 'S'achemina ...' implies pilgrimage from city to wilderness. 'Nid' elevates but also domesticates its goal.

13. On the significance of this episode within the whole work, see J.-M. Racault, 'De la mythologie ornementale au mythe structurant: Paul et Virginie et le mythe des Dioscures', Etudes, pp. 40—63.

14. The significance of this domain, and that of Julie's 'Elysée' in La Nouvelle Héloïse on which it draws on in many respects, are suggestively studied in Ingrid Kisliuk, 'Le Symbolisme du jardin et l'imagination créatrice chez Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre et Chateaubriand', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 185 (1980), 297—418.

15. For the latter, see La Nouvelle Héloïse, 1.3, and Emile (OC IV), pp. 759—62 ('Sophie II').

16. See Jean-Louis Vissière, 'Une page apocalyptique de Paul et Virginie', in Racault, ed., Etudes, pp. 36-39.

17. Bernardin (not always so consistent) will provide a definition: 'la vertu est un effort fait sur nous-mêmes pour le bien d'autrui, dans l'intention de plaire à Dieu seul' (p. 227).

18. The noun '[le] mal' is used several times by Virginie in this episode, and several times of her in the episodes just discussed. In the whole work it is never used by Paul, and only once of Paul — when Virginie prays, at the end of the first section 'qu'il ne t'arrive aucun mal' (p. 172).

19. Robinson, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, p. 54.

20. Thus the critical debate as to whether the young people's misfortunes are to be blamed on sexuality or society is basically misconceived. Both are to blame, because both represent adulthood, which must be refused.

21. The point is made explicitly for each of the couple (pp. 200, 204). It implies a loss of immediacy or plenitude: see Ian Henderson, 'Reading Lessons: A New Appreciation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie', SVEC 2003.12, 303—29.

22. It complements Virginie's report, on a perfectly gendered basis. The young woman writes privately to a female member of her family, recounting her own experiences; the men, who are unrelated, meet publicly to talk politics.

23. His work is hailed by contemporary reviewers for its 'tableaux les plus heureux de la nature' and its 'expression des plus nobles sentiments du cœur humain': quoted in Malcolm Cook, 'La Réception de Paul et Virginie dans la presse contemporaine', in Journalisme et Fiction au xviii^e siècle, ed. by Malcolm Cook and Annie Jourdan (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), pp. 189—96 (pp. 192—93).

24. Saint-Preux had already claimed, as evidence of the corruption of Paris, that 'les mots même d'amour et d'amant sont bannis [...] et relégués avec ceux de chaîne et de flamme dans les romans' (II.21; p. 270).

25. Indeed Prudhon's illustration of the scene on the deck, for the 1806 edition, shows Virginie not so much clutching her clothes and her heart as covering her private parts and her bosom: see the reproduction in Racault, ed., Etudes, p. 247.

26. 'La mort, mon fils, est un bien pour tous les hommes', says old man to Paul, adding on behalf of Virginie that 'la vie n'est qu'une épreuve'. Marguerite in turn affirms that 'la mort est le plus grand des biens [...]. Si la vie est une punition, on doit en souhaiter la fin; si c'est une épreuve, on doit la demander courte' (pp. 255, 258, 263).

27. Revealingly, Bernardin's manuscript included an exclamation attributed to Paul: 'Comment, disait-il, ce sexe est léger et trompeur!' (p. 208, note c).

28. Nature contributed already to visual epiphanies in La Nouvelle Héloïse: sunlight playing on the mountains of the Haut-Valais offered 'un vrai théâtre' (1.23; p. 77); the morning mist rose to reveal the scene of the grape harvest at Clarens 'comme une toile de théâtre' (V.7; p. 604). But these notations are very brief, and — importantly — they show forth 'illusion' not reality, 'another world' rather than this one.

29. This is the sole occurrence within the novel of the phrase 'les douces illusions'. Even here moreover Bernardin provides his own inflexion, by identifying each lost land with its 'climat' and vegetable 'productions'.

30. The aspirations of Revolutionary public design have been summarized by Jean Starobinski as 'architecture parlante, paroles éternisées' (1789: Les Emblèmes de la raison, p. 61). Inscribed 'paroles' have already been hailed in Paul et Virginie as 'a voice out of stone'. If we regard the landscape as nature's architecture, we can also apply the first part of this striking formulation quite directly to Bernardin's novel.

31. 'La fonction idéologique [...] est assumée presque toujours parle vieillard-narrateur. [...] Ainsi, si [l'histoire] ne fait pas l'objet de commentaires idéologiques par les personnages, c'est que ceux-ci, Paul et Virginie surtout, vivent de façon immanente l'idéologie qui lui est sous-jacente': Vasanti Heeralall, 'Sur l'économie narrative de Paul et Virginie', in Racault, ed., Etudes, pp. 103-18 (pp. 115-16).

32. See the Racault edn, which notes that the first description contains 'l'une des rares erreurs botaniques de Paul et Virginie', and cites the antecedent version of the third from Letter 14 of the Voyage à l'île de France ('Glossaire', pp. 60, 71).

33. On narrative patterns, see Philip Robinson, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, ch. 5, and 'The art of Paul et Virginie: Articulations and Ambiguities', in Studies in French Fiction in Honour of Vivienne Mylne (London: Grant & Cutler, 1988), pp. 263—75.