332 WRITING II IS PERSONAL NARRATIVE. 



But it was not to be, for France and Russia were at 

 war. The ill wind that had so often crossed his path 

 when a scheme of travel was on foot, blew him back to 

 Paris. Disappointed, but not disheartened, he resumed 

 bis labours. They were not much lightened by the books 

 he had published, for his great book, the personal narra- 

 tive of his travels, was still to be written. In addition to 

 the labour which this implied, he assumed another, the task 

 of learning Persian. Considering his projected journey to 

 Asia as merely postponed, not abandoned, he set about 

 fitting himself for it. It was his intention to proceed to 

 India, by the way of Teheran or Herat, at his own 

 expense. 



He returned to Paris on the breaking out of the war 

 in 1812, and for two years the public knew nothing of 

 him. lie forsook the salons, and was seldom seen in the 

 chambers of his scientific associates. Even his old friend 

 Bonpland, to whom Napoleon had granted a pension, 

 and whom Josephine, whose heart he had won by a col- 

 lection of flower-seeds from the West Indies, had made 

 intendant of Malmaison, saw but little of him. He was 

 busy with his travels, finishing from memory and imagi- 

 nation his wonderful picture of the tropics. How he 

 must have enjoyed reading his journals, written on the 

 spur of the moment years before; this page on the deck 

 of the Pizarro, with the sea around him, that on the 

 crater of TenerifFe, with the heavens above him, and that 

 in Caracas, dear dangerous Caracas, which an earthquake 

 had just tumbled in ruins! It was as good as a second 

 journey to the tropics. It was eight years since his return 

 to Europe, and during all that time he had brooded, over 

 his task. He had written much, as the reader has seen — 



