Virginia's letter asserted that she was upon the point of being married,
and named the nobleman of the court with whom she was going to be united.
Some even declared that she was already married, of which they were
witnesses. Paul at first despised this report, brought by one of those
trading ships, which often spread erroneous intelligence in their passage;
but some ill-natured persons, by their insulting pity, led him to give some
degree of credit to this cruel intelligence. Besides, he had seen in the
novels which he had lately read that perfidy was treated as a subject of
pleasantry; and knowing that those books were faithful representations of
European manners, he feared that the heart of Virginia was corrupted, and
had forgotten its former engagements. Thus his acquirements only served to
render him miserable, and what increased his apprehension was, that several
ships arrived from Europe, during the space of six months, and not one
brought any tidings of Virginia.

"This unfortunate young man, with a heart torn by the most cruel agitation,
came often to visit me, that I might confirm or banish his inquietude, by
my experience of the world.

"I live, as I have already told you, a league and a half from hence, upon
the banks of a little river which glides along the Sloping Mountain: there
I lead a solitary life, without wife, children, or slaves.

"After having enjoyed, and lost, the rare felicity of living with a
congenial mind, the state of life which appears the least wretched is that
of solitude. It is remarkable that all those nations which have been
rendered unhappy by their political opinions, their manners, or their forms
of government, have produced numerous classes of citizens altogether
devoted to solitude and celibacy. Such were the Egyptians in their decline,
the Greeks of the lower empire; and such in our days are the Indians, the
Chinese, the modern Greeks, the Italians, and most part of the eastern and
southern nations of Europe.

"Thus I pass my days far from mankind whom I wished to serve, and by whom I
have been persecuted. After having travelled over many countries of Europe,
and some parts of America and Africa, I at length pitched my tent in this
thinly-peopled island, allured by its mild temperature and its solitude. A
cottage which I built in the woods, at the foot of a tree, a little field
which I cultivated with my own hands, a river which glides before my door,
suffice for my wants and