The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both upon the English and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, who transferred their services from one side to the other, were, however, miserable assassins, thirsting for blood. These men were frequently Bretons; and, says Froissart, "the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire." With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there was a certain captain, who performed many excellent deeds of arms, namely, Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin squire, attached to the side of the English." One of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's auspices is narrated as follows:—
"Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only twelve companions, to seek adventures. They took the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur, which has a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the castle was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding silently towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a tree without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary well with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would you like to have that porter killed at a shot?'—'Yea,' replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives into the porter's head, and knocks him down. The porter, feeling himself mortally wounded, regains the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and falls down dead."
This delectable anecdote, Froissart—probably as kind-hearted a man by nature as any of his age—tells as the merest matter of course, and without a word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and lettered canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling of blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat or a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record the deaths of dukes, and viscounts, and even simple knights and squires, who have done their devoirs gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets—the vilains—the kernes—the villagios—the Jacques Bonhommes—foh! the red puddle—let it flow; blood is only blood when it gushes from the veins of a gentleman!
JASMIN.
The evening was closing, and the mist stealing over the Garonne, when we came alongside the pier at Agen. A troop of diligence conducteurs and canal touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for Toulouse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of the number who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry evening—for we are now getting into the true south—to the very comfortable hotel looking upon the principal square of the town. One of my objects in stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very remarkable man—Jasmin, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc—the "Last of the Troubadours," as, with more truth than is generally to be found in ad captandum designations, he terms himself, and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the patois of the people, and that patois is the still almost unaltered Langue d'Oc—the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely availing himself of the tongue of the ménestrels. He publishes, certainly—conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems. Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps a couple of thousand persons—the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the South—the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays, working both himself and his applauding audience into fits of enthusiasm and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a feature, however, about these recitations, which is still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities (I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted, chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil, as a barber and hairdresser. It will be generally admitted, that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. "Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery.
A POET'S HOUSE.
Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily directed to his abode, near the open Place of the town, and within earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed, Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes Gens. A little brass basin dangled above the threshold; and, looking through the glass, I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now, I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet; and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until the shop was clear.
Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming—dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and his own in particular—upon the French language in general, and the patois of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far removed from cities, salons, and the clash and din of social influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped—(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)—and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible jargon. It might do for cheating agents de change on the Bourse—for squabbling politicians in the Chambers—for mincing dandies in the salons—for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere faiseurs de phrase—thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural people—a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains—a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that which your own Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or like the brave old mellow tongue—unchanged for centuries—stuffed with the strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words, full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and familiar, homely and graceful—the language which I write in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy litterateurs."