rew,
A lovely bride approaches nigh;
For all should bloom and spring anew,
A lovely bride is passing by!"{2}

Under the blue sky and brilliant sunshine, the joyous young people
frisked along. The picture of youth, gaiety, and beauty, is full of
truth and nature. The bride herself takes part in the frolic. With
roguish eyes she escapes and cries: "Those who catch me will be married
this year!" And then they descend the hill towards the church of
Saint-Amans. Baptiste, the bridegroom, is out of spirits and mute. He
takes no part in the sports of the bridal party. He remembers with grief
the blind girl he has abandoned.

In the cottage under the cliff Marguerite meditates a tragedy. She
dresses herself, and resolves to attend the wedding at Saint-Amans with
her little brother. While dressing, she slips a knife into her bosom,
and then they start for the church. The bridal party soon arrived, and
Marguerite heard their entrance.

The ceremony proceeded. Mass was said. The wedding-ring was blessed;
and as Baptiste placed it on the bride's finger, he said the accustomed
words. In a moment a voice cried: "It is he! It is he;" and Marguerite
rushed through the bridal party towards him with a knife in her hand to
stab herself; but before she could reach the bridegroom she fell down
dead--broken-hearted! The crime which she had intended to commit
against herself was thus prevented.

In the evening, in place of a bridal song, the De Profundis was chanted,
and now each one seemed to say:--

"The roads shall mourn, and, veiled in gloom,
So fair a corpse shall leave its home!
Should mourn and weep, ah, well-away,
So fair a corpse shall pass to-day!"{3}

This poem was finished in August 1835; and on the 26th of the same month
it was publicly recited by Jasmin at Bordeaux, at the request of the
Academy of that city.

There was great beauty, tenderness, and pathos in the poem. It was
perfectly simple and natural. The poem might form the subject of a drama
or a musical cantata. The lamentations of Marguerite on her blindness
remind one of Milton's heart-rending words on the same subject:

"For others, day and joy and light,
For me, all darkness, always night."{4}

Sainte-Beuve, in criticising Jasmin's poems, says that "It was in 1835
that his talent raised itself to the eminence of writing one of his
purest compositions--natural, touching and disinterested--his Blind Girl
of Castel-Cuille, in which he makes us assi