u qui retient mes cheveux
Les glands d'azur retombent avec grace.
Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!
Que sur mon front ce saphir etincelle:
Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien,
Bien,--chere Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle.

Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier
(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espere.
(Ah, fi! profane, est-ce la mon collier?
Quoi! ces grains d'or benits par le Saint-Pere!)
Il y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main,
En y pensant, a peine je respire;
Pere Anselmo doit m'entendre demain,
Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?

Vite un coup d'oeil au miroir,
Le dernier. ----J'ai l'assurance
Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir
Chez l'ambassadeur de France.

Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait.
Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle!
Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait,
Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle!
L'horrible feu ronge avec volupte
Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'eleve,
Et sans pitie devore sa beaute,
Ses dix-huit ans, helas, et son doux reve!

Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!
On disait, Pauvre Constance!
Et on dansait, jusqu'au jour,
Chez l'ambassadeur de France.

Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say.
What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do
with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There
they danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of France. Make
what you will of it.

If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted
only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from
beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression,
except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there
is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing.
The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as
they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of
death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no
longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire
gnaws with _voluptuousness--without pity_. It is soon past. The fate
is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline
atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity,

They said, 'Poor Constance!'

Sec. 14. Now