«Saint-Pierre was no ordinary person, either as man or author. His was a strong and original character, more bent on action than on literature. Though a master of style and a great painter in words, he was ever a preacher, a sermonneur, as Sainte-Beuve calls him. His masterpiece—as the French reckon “Paul and Virginia” to be—came by chance, and is but a chapter in a huge treatise, a parable told by the way in a voluminous gospel. It is as if Ruskin's chef d'œuvre were a novelette, or as if Carlyle's story had been a perfect whole, instead of a fragment and a failure.” This book written by Arvède Barine is a biography of the famous French writer Bernardin de Saint Pierre.
