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Updated: June 6, 2025
By PIERRE LOTI With a Preface by ALBERT SOREL, of the French Academy LOUIS-MARIE-JULIEN VIAUD, "Pierre Loti," was born in Rochefort, of an old French-Protestant family, January 14, 1850. He was connected with the. French Navy from 1867 to 1900, and is now a retired officer with full captain's rank.
When peasant Viaud, however, saw them standing their little empty shoes in front of the meagre fire, he bowed his head on his hands, and the tears trickled through his fingers. But the mother smiled softly to herself, as she kissed each of the children and tucked them into their worn sheepskin covers.
Had Admiral Julien Viaud returned now to Tahiti, he would have found the Chinese stores thronged by the handsomest girls, their restaurants thriving on their charms, and the Chinese the possessors of the pick of the lower and middle classes of young women.
While for his part, had Gabriel known that the strange horseman was a messenger from the king, and that he had that day played a very important part in the affairs of the Viaud family, had he known this, he surely would have stood stock-still and opened his eyes wide with amazement!
So that very day he sent for a trusty messenger, and after explaining things to him, directed him to set out as soon as possible for St. Martin's Abbey, and there to seek out Brother Stephen and inquire about the little peasant boy, Gabriel Viaud. And then, if he found everything to be true that Gabriel had said in his prayer, he was to act according to further orders which King Louis gave him.
As the sky grows yellow and the cold breeze of sunset springs up, we are still there, near the lonely gate, beneath the branches of the old trees. His real name is Louis Marie Julien Viaud, and he is an officer in the French army. His work is particularly celebrated for the vividness and brilliancy of his descriptions. He has described scenes in Africa, India, China, and on the ocean.
It was of it Louis Marie Julien Viaud, shortly after he had been christened Loti, wrote: The pool had numerous visitors every day; beautiful young women of Papeete spent the warm tropical days here, chatting, singing and sleeping, or even diving and swimming like agile gold fish.
Although of a most energetic character and a veteran of various campaigns Japan, Tonkin, Senegal, China M. Viaud was so timid as a young midshipman that his comrades named him "Loti," a small Indian flower which seems ever discreetly to hide itself. This is, perhaps, a pleasantry, as elsewhere there is a much more romantic explanation of the word.
"You are late, my friend," the princess went on, with a note of pity in her soft voice. "My mother remembered the days Loti depicted in 'Rarahu. My grandmother knew little Tarahu of Bora-Bora of whom he wrote. Viaud was then a midshipman. We did not call him Loti, but Roti, our coined word for a rose, because he had rosy cheeks. But he could not call himself Roti in his novel, for in French, his language, that meant roasted, and one might think of boeuf
To the surprised looks and questions of Gabriel's father and mother, he only said that the Christ-child had been in the castle of the Lady Anne of Bretagne, and had ordered him to bring certain things to the family of a Norman peasant boy named Gabriel Viaud. And such delightful things as they were!
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