In commemoration of his occupation of the site, he composed his Ma
Bigno--'My Vineyard'--one of the most simple and graceful of his poems.

Jasmin dedicated Ma Bigno to Madame Louis Veill, of Paris. He told
her of his purchase of Papillote, a piece of ground which he had long
desired to have, and which he had now been able to buy with the money
gained by the sale of his poems.

He proceeds to describe the place:

"In this tiny little vineyard," he says, "my only chamber is a grotto.
Nine cherry trees: such is my wood! I have six rows of vines, between
which I walk and meditate. The peaches are mine; the hazel nuts are
mine! I have two elms, and two fountains. I am indeed rich! You may
laugh, perhaps, at my happiness. But I wish you to know that I love the
earth and the sky. It is a living picture, sparkling in the sunshine.
Come," he said, "and pluck my peaches from the branches; put them
between your lovely teeth, whiter than the snow. Press them: from
the skin to the almond they melt in the mouth--it is honey!" He next
describes what he sees and hears from his grotto: the beautiful flowers,
the fruit glowing in the sun, the luscious peaches, the notes of the
woodlark, the zug-zug of the nightingale, the superb beauty of the
heavens. "They all sing love, and love is always new."

He compares Paris, with its grand ladies and its grand opera, with his
vineyard and his nightingales. "Paris," he says, "has fine flowers and
lawns, but she is too much of the grande dame. She is unhappy, sleepy.
Here, a thousand hamlets laugh by the river's side. Our skies laugh;
everything is happy; everything lives. From the month of May, when our
joyous summer arrives, for six months the heavens resound with music. A
thousand nightingales sing all the night through.... Your grand opera is
silent, while our concert is in its fullest strain."

The poem ends with a confession on the part of the poet of sundry
pilferings committed by himself in the same place when a boy--of
apple-trees broken, hedges forced, and vine-ladders scaled, winding up
with the words:

"Madame, you see I turn towards the past without a blush; will you?
What I have robbed I return, and return with usury. I have no door to my
vineyard; only two thorns bar its threshold. When, through a hole I see
the noses of marauders, instead of arming myself with a cane, I turn and
go away, so that they may come back. He who robbed when he was young,
may in his old age allow h