"I suppose we have got through more than half our journey, for see,
blackie has eaten up the best part of his cane," said the doctor; but he
was mistaken, for our sable guide knew that he could get another at any
estate we passed, and soon sucked up his first walking-stick.

We found that we were passing the village of Pamplemousses, close to
which is an estate where, we heard, are to be seen the tombs of Paul and
Virginia, whose history, written by Saint Pierre, I had read. Not a
moment had I ever doubted the truth of their history; still, not being
sentimentally disposed, I had no great wish to visit their graves,
especially as I was in a hurry to hear of Alfred. Our guide, however,
had no notion of our passing a spot which everybody visited, without
paying it our respects; so, before we were aware of it, we found
ourselves standing before two pretty urns in a garden of roses.

"And so here sleep at rest poor Paul and his devoted Virginia," said I,
with a sigh; for I was beginning to feel sentimental.

"Fiddlestick!" answered the doctor, laughing. "The _Saint Geran_ was, I
believe, wrecked hereabouts, and some of her passengers were drowned;
but whether there was a Paul or a Virginia on board, I cannot say.
Certainly the French author had no other foundation for his tale than
the mere wreck of a ship of that name; and as the language is good, and
the moral is less exceptionable than that of most French tales, it is
put into the hands of most young people beginning to learn French, and
has thus become universally known."

I felt almost vexed to find that two such people as Paul and Virginia
never really did exist, till the doctor laughed me back into my usual
state of mind.

"Fictitious sentiment I cannot abide," he observed. "There is quite
enough of real sorrow and suffering in the world to excite our
sympathies; and if we employ them on fiction, we are very apt to exhaust
them before they can be employed to some useful end."

The scenery at the foot of Pieter Bot is very fine, as, indeed, was all
we passed through. It was only towards the evening that we reached my
grandfather's estate of Eau Douce, or Sweet Water, as he called it. How
my heart beat as our guide pointed out the house, a single-storied
building with a wide verandah round it, standing in a garden filled with
trees and shrubs of the most luxuriant growth, and of every variety of
shape and colour.

"Can Alfred himself be here?" I thought