er. When he reached the tenderest part he gave
way to his emotion, and wept. Tears are as contagious as smiles; and
even the academicians, who may not have wept with Rachel, wept with
Jasmin. It was the echo of sorrow to sorrow; the words which blind
despair had evoked from the blind Margaret.

All eyes were turned to Thierry as Jasmin described the girl's
blindness. The poet omitted some of the more painful lines, which
might have occasioned sorrow to his kind entertainer. These lines, for
instance, in Gascon:

"Jour per aoutres, toutjour! et per jou, malhurouzo,
Toutjour ney! toutjour ney!
Que fay negre len d'el! Oh! que moun amo es tristo!
Oh! que souffri, moun Diou! Couro ben doun, Batisto!"

or, as translated by Longfellow:

"Day for the others ever, but for me
For ever night! for ever night!
When he is gone, 'tis dark! my soul is sad!
I suffer! O my God! come, make me glad."

When Jasmin omitted this verse, Thierry, who had listened with rapt
attention, interrupted him. "Poet," he said, "you have omitted a
passage; read the poem as you have written it." Jasmin paused, and then
added the omitted passage. "Can it be?" said the historian: "surely
you, who can describe so vividly the agony of those who cannot see, must
yourself have suffered blindness!" The words of Jasmin might have been
spoken by Thierry himself, who in his hours of sadness often said, "I
see nothing but darkness today."

At the end of his recital Jasmin was much applauded. Ampere, who had
followed him closely in the French translation of his poem, said:
"If Jasmin had never written verse, it would be worth going a hundred
leagues to listen to his prose." What charmed his auditors most was his
frankness. He would even ask them to listen to what he thought his best
verses. "This passage," he would say, "is very fine." Then he read it
afresh, and was applauded. He liked to be cheered. "Applaud! applaud!"
he said at the end of his reading, "the clapping of your hands will be
heard at Agen."

After the recitation an interesting conversation took place. Jasmin
was asked how it was that he first began to write poetry; for every one
likes to know the beginnings of self-culture. He thereupon entered
into a brief history of his life; how he had been born poor; how his
grandfather had died at the hospital; and how he had been brought up
by charity. He described his limited education and his admission to the
barber's shop; his reading of F