INTRODUCTION.

Xavier Boniface Saintine was born in 1795 and died in 1865. His father, a professor at the College de la Marche, belonged to a respectable but not wealthy family, and had no private means of his own, nothing beyond his meagre salary which barely sufficed to support a family of seven persons; nevertheless, at the death of his brother, he admitted permanently into his own family this brother's two orphan children. Thanks to a happy inspiration of the Professor's wife means were obtained to feed his houseful of children. The courageous woman, who grudged neither toil nor trouble on their behalf, opened a small linen-draper's shop in the Carrefour Bucy, with the sign over the door "A la mère de famille," a truly appropriate

motto.

Xavier's eldest brother had taken to his father's profession and was teaching at Yverdun; another brother had perished in the Russian campaign; Xavier himself, in the worst days of 1814, set out, as a conscript, to join the army which was attempting to delay the advance of the enemies of France; the roads were however so completely in their power and the country so scoured by them that he had to return home.

Xavier now made up his mind to take his diploma as doctor. All the while, however, that he attended, with this object in view, the lectures at the Hôtel-Dieu, he spent much of his time in the society of young men, who, later, became famous in the literary world. Ancelot, Casimir Delavigne, Eugène Scribe and several others were his constant companions, and

the taste for literature that he acquired in his intercourse with them gradually weaned him from the medical profession. A surgical operation, which he one day witnessed, so shook his nervous system that he determined to give up the lancet for the pen. Nevertheless the time he had devoted to medical studies had not been thrown away. He had acquired the habit of patient observation and a taste for science which allowed his inquiring mind to penetrate into the mysteries of Nature. Always meditating on that inexhaustible source of discoveries and inspirations which was to supply him with the materials for his Picciola, he studied Botany to the very last day of his life.

While attending lectures and walking the hospitals Saintine had found leisure to write some poetry and even a few plays for the stage. Already, at that early period of his life, he had good grounds for entertaining a hope that he would some day live by his pen. But the literary profession was not yet likely to afford him a sufficient source of income, he consequently accepted the post which was offered him of private Secretary to one of the members of the French Academy, le comte de Ségur, a noble old man, who had preserved, in his advancing years, all the grace and vivacity of mind that had, in former years, fascinated the two ancient courts of France and Russia.

Count de Ségur scarcely ever wrote himself; he generally dictated. The work of dictating being over, he used to rise and go, and his young secretary then made a fair copy of what he had hurriedly scribbled while attempting to keep pace with a dictation which was often too rapid. Saintine usually hastened to finish his task, and then was a free man. One day, however, he was extremely slow in writing his fair copy, and when it was finished, he began a fresh one, writing slower still than before. A great hope was then agitating him; he was in a state of feverish expectation, and not knowing how to occupy himself so as to allay his mental torture, he kept copying by way of killing time.

Count de Ségur, on his return from the sitting of the

Academy, found his secretary still busy copying; he did not complain, for he was very indulgent. He let him go on with his work and began talking about the business done that day at the Academy. Saintine stopped writing and listened. The sitting had been an important one. The distribution of the annual prizes was at hand, and the members had had to determine between the poems sent in for competition.

The subject proposed was "The happiness derived from study in all conditions of life." The competition had been severe, the choice difficult and embarrassing. At last M. de Ségur said that two poems of superior excellence had obtained all the votes. He did not know, as yet, the names of the successful poets laureate, but he remembered the motto written on one of the Manuscripts. Saintine trembling, with his face bent over his paper, was anxiously listening. He had chosen as his motto a line out of his own poem :

"Je voudrais d'un laurier faire hommage à ma mère."

When he heard Count de Ségur quoting this line, he rose pale with emotion, and, with tears in his eyes, he said to M. de Ségur: "My fair copy has for a long while been finished, but I was waiting for your return to know my fate; allow me now to go and tell my mother that my prayer has been granted. You have unwittingly informed me that I have won the prize for poetry."

Thus it was that M. de Ségur learnt that his private secretary was a poet laureate.

Saintine, from this time forth, devoted himself entirely to literature. Jonathan le Visionnaire, a set of sensational narratives, in which Philosophy toys with the Supernatural and the Real, was his first prose work. Again a poetical competition with "Mutual instruction as its subject won for him a prize at the Academy. After this he sought a new field for the display of his talents and wrote La Campagne des Alpes, a work so able that it was mistaken for the production of a military veteran. Walter Scott in his pamphlet on France and Napoleon, after quoting several passages out of Saintine's book,

wrote in a note: "extracted from the History of the Campagne des Alpes by General Saintine." This error is all the more excusable in a writer like Walter Scott that General Jomini fell into it himself.

Saintine, who now resided at Belleville, was very intimate with Scribe, Désaugiers, Mélesville and others, and co-operated with them in joint authorship. His lighter productions he signed simply Xavier, reserving for his more serious works the name of Saintine. In 1832 he published Le Mutile. This was the first Act, as it were, of a trilogy, of which Picciola and Seul! are the following Acts. The same thought pervades this triple drama, the baneful influence of isolation, the Væ soli! of the Ancients.

The publication of Le Mutilé brought to Saintine a letter from Châteaubriand, in which we read the following passage: "Vous, Monsieur, qui venez quand je m'en vas, soutenez la gloire de la France; à vous l'avenir, à moi le passé dont pourtant je ne me soucie guère."

With regard to Picciola, M. Grimaud, in his work entitled Les poëtes lauréats, gives the following anecdote :

"Un jour Michel Masson, intime ami de Saintine, vint le voir et le trouva feuilletant un manuscrit quelque peu jauni. Qu'est-ce que cela? demanda-t-il.—Un roman que j'ai fait pour moi, pour moi seul, pour ma propre satisfaction.-Eh bien, pour la mienne, lisez-le-moi. Il vous ennuiera.-Je le verrai bien. La lecture achevée, Michel Masson lui dit: Mon ami, publiez votre Picciola, publiez-la sans crainte; et je vous le prédis, ce sera votre livre."

Michel Masson had judged right. Picciola won for Saintine the highest distinction the French Academy could award, the Montyon Prize; to this work he was further indebted for the cross of the Legion of Honour, and to it also he owed the prosperous beginning of the second portion of his life's journey, the happy marriage which united him to an affectionate and devoted wife.

Picciola was a great literary success. Music, painting, the stage, even fashion, in all its frivolities, borrowed in turn from

the Author of Picciola either the sentiment or the title of his book. There was a time when the flower of the Fénestrelle prisoner blossomed everywhere; on the piano as a musical rêverie; on the easel as a painting; those who in the evening saw Picciola represented on the stage, might have contemplated, in the morning, Picciola, a real living flower at a flowershow.

Saintine was not dazzled by the great renown of his book. He was one of those writers who believe that the man who possesses the talent of writing will not be asked: What success hast thou achieved? but: Whom hast thou comforted? and he had the satisfaction one day to find that one prisoner at least had derived comfort from the perusal of his Picciola. In 1843, a young man (Napoleon III.), who had been in too great a hurry to trade upon his great name, was atoning in the fortress of Ham for the mistake of his premature step. Saintine, who always sympathized with suffering, wherever it might be, sent the prisoner a copy of his book. A few days later he received the following reply:

Monsieur,

Du Fort de Ham, 15 août, 1843.

Toutes les fois qu'un auteur distingué veut bien m'envoyer son ouvrage, je le reçois avec la reconnaissance que l'on doit, dans ma position surtout, à toute marque d'intérêt ou de sympathie; mais l'envoi que vous m'avez fait de votre charmant livre, m'a non-seulement fait éprouver un sentiment de reconnaissance pour vous, il m'a vivement touché. En effet, Picciola adressée à moi, à Ham, c'est un souvenir agréable, c'est une leçon, c'est une consolation même. Votre livre me rappelle le bon cœur de ma grand’mère, il me fait souvenir de l'instabilité des choses humaines, des malheurs particuliers qui existent sous tous les régimes; il me console en me prouvant que l'homme philosophe a dans son cœur des trésors cachés qui, partout s'il le veut, lui font goûter le bonheur, et qu'enfin si les puissants ont pour eux le nombre des hommages, les opprimés possèdent quelques dévouements d'élite qui, par leur sincérité et leur tendresse, valent mieux que les applaudissements de la foule.