Description
This book is a novel written by the French writer Bernardin de Saint-Pièrre entitled “Paul and Virginie” written in the year 1787; it was translated by Mustafa Al-Manfaluti under the title ”Virtue”.
The author claimed that he drew the events of his story from reality, and that the characters lived on the African island of Maurice in the Indian Ocean near the African islands of Madagascar and the Seychelles. The author was visiting this island when he saw two dilapidated huts that attracted his attention and he stopped to contemplate them.Two French women named Marguerite and Helen.
Marguerite was the lover of a French nobleman who cheated on her, who slept with her and abandoned her, so she had to leave her homeland to cover her shame, came to the island, gave birth to a child she named Paul after the Apostle Paul, and lived there as a righteous and pious woman; Helen came with her husband from France to seek a living, but her husband soon died, and she came with her maid to the place where Marguerite was. from France to seek a living, but her husband soon died, so she came with her maid to where Margaret was, and the two women soon made the valley where they landed a farm that they shared between them, and Helen soon gave birth to a beautiful baby girl whom she named Virginie. The two women and their two children lived a happy life, spinning as the islanders did, living as they did, and their children grew up together until they reached adolescence, brought up to love virtue, help the weak, do good, and be attached to each other. One day, Helen received a letter from her aunt in France suggesting that Helen return with her daughter to France, or send her daughter to her wealthy aunt, and that she intended to bequeath all her wealth to Virginie; and here began the tragedy of the two lovers.
After that, the governor of the island came to them and tried to convince Helen to send her daughter to France to live a luxurious life next to her aunt, and the mother tried to convince her daughter to travel in vain because Virginie was attached to Paul and could not bear to leave him; after some time, the governor sent his soldiers at night and they carried Virginie forcibly to the shore and put her on a ship that was heading to France; years passed, and news of Virginie did not reach her mother and lover. “The mother tried to persuade her daughter to travel in vain, because Virginie was attached to Paul and could not bear to leave him; after some time, the governor sent his soldiers at night, and they forcibly carried Virginie to the shore and put her on a ship heading to France; Paul resolved to travel to France to live as a servant to one of its princes in order to steal a chance to see his beloved, but an elder who was a friend of theirs discouraged him.
One day the islanders saw a ship coming, and Paul sensed the return of his beloved, and his intuition was true, but the ship could not dock because of heavy storms, so Virginie sent a letter with a sailor to her mother informing her of her arrival, and telling her that her aunt had expelled her because she did not fulfill her desire to marry a nobleman. As fate would have it, the two lovers could not meet, as the storm intensified, the ship hit a huge rock and crashed, and Paul tried to save his beloved in vain, and the beloved died by drowning, and the lover soon died on her grave.
This is a quick summary of the novel, which was so popular in France that Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of France, admired it and awarded its author the Medal of Honor, and the names “Paul” and “Virginie” spread widely in France until they swept the names and became the most common in various popular classes; this novel captured the heart of “Al-Manfaluti“ because of the glorification of virtue and the call for goodness and morality. In addition, in its characters, environment, and events, it is very close to Al-Manfaluti's society and the village environment that he loves, and that is why we see him summarizing it in poetry in a poem that he made at the end of his book; after he was cut off from poetry for a long period of time, and this story is the only one he summarized in poetry, and he called it ”virtue“ because the novel is based on it, and because he wants young people to base their lives on it.
