the sugar canes,' answered Virginia. 'Your visit will be then still more
delightful,' resumed her young acquaintances. When she was asked what was
her own age, and that of Paul, 'My brother,' said she, 'is as old as the
great cocoa tree of the fountain; and I am as old as the little cocoa tree.
The mangoes have borne fruit twelve times, and the orange trees have borne
flowers four-and-twenty times, since I came into the world.' Their lives
seemed linked to the trees like those of fauns or dryads. They knew no
other historical epochas than that of the lives of their mothers, no other
chronology than that of their orchards, and no other philosophy than that
of doing good, and resigning themselves to the will of Heaven.

"Thus grew those children of nature. No care had troubled their peace, no
intemperance had corrupted their blood, no misplaced passion had depraved
their hearts. Love, innocence, and piety, possessed their souls; and those
intellectual graces unfolded themselves in their features, their attitudes,
and their motions. Still in the morning of life, they had all its blooming
freshness; and surely such in the garden of Eden appeared our first
parents, when, coming from the hands of God, they first saw, approached,
and conversed together, like brother and sister. Virginia was gentle,
modest, and confiding as Eve; and Paul, like Adam, united the figure of
manhood with the simplicity of a child.

"When alone with Virginia, he has a thousand times told me, he used to say
to her, at his return from labour, 'When I am wearied, the sight of you
refreshes me. If from the summit of the mountain I perceive you below in
the valley, you appear to me in the midst of our orchard like a blushing
rosebud. If you go towards our mother's house, the partridge, when it runs
to meet its young has a shape less beautiful, and a step less light. When I
lose sight of you through the trees, I have no need to see you in order to
find you again. Something of you, I know not how, remains for me in the air