ould pass over her body rather than
be married. Pascal turned to Marcel and said: "Love overpowers me! If I
die, will you take care of my mother?"

Then the gallant soldier dispelled the gloom which had overshadowed the
union of the loving pair. "I can do no more," he said; "your mother
has conquered me. Franconnette is good, and pure, and true. I loved the
maid, Pascal, and would have shed my blood for her, but she loved you
instead of me.

"Know that she is not sold to the Evil One. In my despair I hired the
sorcerer to frighten you with his mischievous tale, and chance did the
rest. When we both demanded her, she confessed her love for you. It was
more than I could bear, and I resolved that we should both die.

"But your mother has disarmed me; she reminds me of my own. Live,
Pascal, for your wife and your mother! You need have no more fear of me.
It is better that I should die the death of a soldier than with a crime
upon my conscience."

Thus saying, he vanished from the crowd, who burst into cheers. The
happy lovers fell into each other's arms. "And now," said Jasmin, in
concluding his poem, "I must lay aside my pencil. I had colours for
sorrow; I have none for such happiness as theirs!"

Endnotes to Chapter IX.

{1} The whole of Jasmin's answer to M. Dumon will be found in the
Appendix at the end of this volume.

{2}'Gascogne et Languedoc,' par Paul Joanne, p. 95 (edit. 1883).

{3} The dance still exists in the neighbourhood of Agen. When there a
few years ago, I was drawn by the sound of a fife and a drum to the spot
where a dance of this sort was going on. It was beyond the suspension
bridge over the Garonne, a little to the south of Agen. A number of men
and women of the working-class were assembled on the grassy sward,
and were dancing, whirling, and pirouetting to their hearts' content.
Sometimes the girls bounded from the circle, were followed by their
sweethearts, and kissed. It reminded one of the dance so vigorously
depicted by Jasmin in Franconnette.

{4} Miss Harriet Preston, of Boston, U.S., published part of a
translation of Franconnette in the 'Atlantic Monthly' for February,
1876, and adds the following note: "The buscou, or busking, was a kind
of bee, at which the young people assembled, bringing the thread of
their late spinning, which was divided into skeins of the proper size
by a broad and thin plate of steel or whalebone called a busc. The same
thing, under precisely the same nam