A description then follows of a rural wedding, introducing habits and superstitions, which remind one of Burns and Hallow-e'en. This picture of youth, gaiety, and beauty, is full of truth and nature; and the contrast is affecting, of the desolate situation of the young blind girl, who should have been the bride, but whom Baptiste, her lover, had deserted for one richer, since a severe malady had deprived her of her sight. Poor Marguerite (Margarido) still thinks him faithful, and expects his return to fulfil his vow, when the sound of the wedding music, and the explanation of her little brother, reveal to her all her misfortune. The song of hope and fear, as she sits expecting him, is extremely beautiful; and some of the expressions, in the original singular yet musical Gascon, must lose greatly by translation, either in French or English. Her lamentations on her blindness remind one of Milton's heart-rending words on the same subject:—
"Jour per aoutres, toutjour! et per jou, malhurouzo,
Toutjour ney, toutjour ney!"
"Margarido's Reflections."
"After long months of sad regret
Returned!—return'd? and comes not yet?
Although to my benighted eyes
He knows no other star may rise:
He knows my lonely moments past,
Expecting, hoping to the last.
He knows my heart is faithful still,
I wait my vows but to fulfil.
Alas! without him what have I?
Grief bows my fame and dims my eye;
For others, day and joy and light,
For me, all darkness—always night!
"What gloom spreads round where he is not:
How cold, how lonely, he away!
But in his presence all forgot,
I never think of sun or day.
What has the day? a sky of blue—
His eyes are of a softer hue,
That light a heaven of hope and love.
Pure as the skies that glow above.
But skies, earth, blindness, tears, and pain,
Are all forgot, unfelt, unknown,
When he is by my side again,
And holds my hand within his own!"
When the unfortunate girl finds that her lover is untrue, despair takes possession of her mind; she causes herself to be conducted to the church, where the ceremony of the marriage is taking place; and at the moment when Baptiste pronounces the words which seal his fate with that of her rival, Angela, she rushes forward, and draws a knife to stab herself; but at the instant she falls dead at his feet, before her hand has accomplished the fatal blow. The poet here congratulates his heroine on having died without crime, her intention going for nothing, and the angels bearing her soul to heaven as immaculate.
There is little in the plot of this story—its beauty lies in the grace, and ease, and simplicity of the language, and the pathos of the situations. The same may be said of the ballad of "Françouneto," the latest work of the author, which is just now making a great sensation in France. The close of both these stories is somewhat weak and hurried, and both fail in effect, except when Jasmin reads them himself,—then there appears nothing to be desired.
Françonnette is a village beauty and coquette, promised to Marcel, a young soldier, but attached to Pascal, a peasant, whose poverty and pride prevent his declaring the passion he feels for the volatile but tender maiden, who
"Long had fired each youth with love,
Each maiden with despair;"