Opinion | Playing by the book

Gran used to say there’s nothing like getting a good feeling of a place and time like reading a well-researched novel. Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre certainly cracked that after his stay on Mauritius — then known as Ile de France — from 1768 to 1770. Added to his being witness to tropical scenery, French colonial society and slavery, a talking point would have been the 1744 wreck of the Saint-Géran on the north of the island, one of the most famous shipwrecks associated with French literature.

His romantic-tragic novel, Paul et Virginie, about a boy and a girl who grew up with their French single mums and their slaves on the island seems immortalised in Mauritius — and is sometimes believed to be the definitive history of the times on the Indian Ocean island. Paul and Virginie lived close to nature having adventures in the forests, were kind to runaway slaves and fell in love. Things changed when she was summoned to France by a wealthy aristocratic aunt for education and inheritance, or social advancement, hated it and returned home only to drown when her ship wrecked during a hurricane.

Unlike the others on board she would not strip off to swim ashore. Her sense of modesty and virtue would not allow it. Paul, who got a glimpse of her on board later saw her corpse washed on the shore.

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He died of a broken heart. Vallée des Prêtres, a predominantly Muslim suburb of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, is sometimes associated with the forested and well-watered little paradise where, legend has it, the couple were raised. Today, among the narrow streets, a park with iconic banyan trees, a smart hospital and mosques, it has a Rue Paul et Virginie.

Its street sign is in French. An official notice pegged to a tree is in English. Mauritian Creole, a French-based language, is the most widely spoken language in Mauritius, while French is widely used in media and culture.

English is used officially. Streams like those Paul supposedly carried Virginie over — an image immortalised in statues — are now canals, lined with volcanic rock like many walls and buildings in Mauritius, built over the centuries when there has been Dutch, French and British rule and for the past 58 years, independence.

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