Any Other Manner Of Existence Is Frightful To Me, And I Have
Sufficient Knowledge Of The World And Of Myself To Know That I Can Only
Be Happy In Living Thus."
But in the very month that he wrote contracting himself - that is
precisely the word - to marry the girl he had never seen, Eleonore, the
girl whom he had seen, whom he had loved, and whom he still loved in
his heart, came to Paris with her parents.
Laperouse saw her again. He
told her what had occurred. Of course she wept; what girl would not?
She said, between her sobs, that if it was to be all over between them
she would go into a convent. She could never marry anyone else.
"Mon histoire est un roman," and here beginneth the new chapter of this
real love story. Why, we wonder, has not some novelist discovered these
Laperouse letters and founded a tale upon them? Is it not a better
story even told in bare outline in these few pages, than nine-tenths of
the concoctions of the novelists, which are sold in thousands? Think of
the wooing of these two delightful people, the beautiful girl and the
gallant sailor, in the ocean isle, with its tropical perfumes and
colours, its superb mountain and valley scenery, bathed in
eternal sunshine by day and kissed by cool ocean breezes by night - the
isle of Paul and Virginia, the isle which to Alexandre Dumas was the
Paradise of the World, an enchanted oasis of the ocean, "all carpeted
with greenery and refreshed with cooling streams, where, no matter what
the season, you may gently sink asleep beneath the shade of palms and
jamrosades, soothed by the babbling of a crystal spring."
Think of how he must have entertained and thrilled her with accounts of
his adventures:
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