"I pass, and repass, not a soul I know,
Not one Agenais in this hurrying crowd;
No one salutes or shakes me by the hand."
And yet, he says, what a grand world it is! how tasteful! how fashionable! There seem to be no poor. They are all ladies and gentlemen. Each day is a Sabbath; and under the trees the children play about the fountains. So different from Agen! He then speaks of his interview with Louis Philippe and the royal family, his recital of L'Abuglo before "great ladies, great writers, lords, ministers, and great savants;" and he concludes his poem with the words: "Paris makes me proud, but Agen makes me happy."
The poem is full of the impressions of his mind at the time—simple, clear, naive. It is not a connected narrative, nor a description of what he saw, but it was full of admiration of Paris, the centre of France, and, as Frenchmen think, of civilisation. It is the simple wonder of the country cousin who sees Paris for the first time—the city that had so long been associated with his recollections of the past. And perhaps he seized its more striking points more vividly than any regular denizen of the capital.
Endnotes for Chapter XII.
{1} 'Les Peuples de la France: Ethnographie Nationale.' (Didier.)
CHAPTER XIII. JASMIN AND HIS ENGLISH CRITICS.
Jasmin's visit to Paris in 1842 made his works more extensively known, both at home and abroad. His name was frequently mentioned in the Parisian journals, and Frenchmen north of the Loire began to pride themselves on their Gascon poet. His Blind Girl had been translated into English, Spanish, and Italian. The principal English literary journal, the Athenaeum, called attention to his works a few months after his appearance in Paris.{1} The editor introduced the subject in the following words:
"On the banks of the Garonne, in the picturesque and ancient town of Agen, there exists at this moment a man of genius of the first order—a rustic Beranger, a Victor Hugo, a Lamartine—a poet full of fire, originality, and feeling—an actor superior to any now in France, excepting Rachel, whom he resembles both in his powers of declamation and his fortunes. He is not unknown—he is no mute inglorious Milton; for the first poets, statesmen, and men of letters in France have been to visit him. His parlour chimney-piece, behind his barber's shop, is covered with offerings to his genius from royalty and rank. His smiling, dark-eyed wife, exhibits to the curious the tokens of her husband's acknowledged merit; and gold and jewels shine in the eyes of the astonished stranger, who, having heard his name, is led to stroll carelessly into the shop, attracted by a gorgeous blue cloth hung outside, on which he may have read the words, Jasmin, Coiffeur."
After mentioning the golden laurels, and the gifts awarded to him by those who acknowledged his genius, the editor proceeds to mention his poems in the Gascon dialect—his Souvenirs his Blind Girl and his Franconnette—and then refers to his personal appearance. "Jasmin is handsome in person, with eyes full of intelligence, of good features, a mobility of expression absolutely electrifying, a manly figure and an agreeable address; but his voice is harmony itself, and its changes have an effect seldom experienced on or off the stage. The melody attributed to Mrs. Jordan seems to approach it nearest. Had he been an actor instead of a poet, he would have 'won all hearts his way'... On the whole, considering the spirit, taste, pathos, and power of this poet, who writes in a patois hitherto confined to the lower class of people in a remote district—considering the effect that his verses have made among educated persons, both French and foreign, it is impossible not to look upon him as one of the remarkable characters of his age, and to award him, as the city of Clemence Isaure has done, the Golden Laurel, as the first of the revived Troubadours, destined perhaps to rescue his country from the reproach of having buried her poetry in the graves of Alain Chartier and Charles of Orleans, four centuries ago."