age of seven he was strong enough to accompany his father to the charivaris, whither he went with a horn in his hand, a paper cap on his head, and seemingly much pride of position in his heart. But the greatest delight of his childhood was to go "barefoot and barehead" to gather sticks for his parents in the willow-islands of the Garonne, with a party of some score of his companions. To this day it enchants him to remember how, "as the clock struck noon the cry would arise, à l'illo, amits!-to the island, friends!" How they then set off, singing, L'agnel que m'as dounat, a favorite song in that country; how, their faggots and their work finished an hour before nightfall, they spent that time in swinging upon the pliant branches, and how they then returned home again, "thirty voices chaunting the same air and chorus, while thirty bundles of wood danced on thirty heads." All his amusements, however, were not so innocent. He was a sad robber of orchards; nor does he seem even yet reformed in principle, for his mouth evidently still waters at the recollection of his exploits "Over the hedge and over the wall, What lots of cherries and plums we stole! Peaches and grapes and nectarines, Up the trees and along the vines ! Pears and apricots past beliefOh! I was such a famous thief! Leaping like squirrels, on we came, Scourges of gardens, and proud of the name." But, amid the gaiety and carelessness of Jasmin's early years, there was a care which cast a gloom over his happiest moments; and it arose from a cause which does not usually much sadden a child. The future poet had an eager thirst for education; the poverty of his parents did not admit of his receiving it. The thought of school, and of his being debarred from it, constantly haunted him; his poor mother would whisper the word to his grandfather, and then look wistfully at her boy; but there was no help, they had not the means, and his singular desire of knowledge could not be gratified. He could only wish. The family had evidently a hard battle to sustain. Jasmin's childhood was one of hunger and privation. We find him afterward alluding to his forced fasts, in some humorous verses addressed "To a Curé of Marmande, who at a great dinner wished to make him observe Lent." We think we hear some troubadour of Raymond's court discharging his pleasantry at the penance-pronouncing St. Dominic, or some of his monk companions. So much for imaginary terrors. The actual things of life and their stern reality were soon forced upon him in a way that left its trace for ever. It was a Monday. At play with his companions, he was their king, and they formed his escort. In the midst of his reign he sees two porters approach, bearing an old man seated on a willow chair. They come nearer and nearer, near enough at last for him to distinguish his grandfather. He throws himself round his poor relative's neck, and asks him anxiously and in wonder, what ails him, why he has left home, where he is going. "To the workhouse, my son," " replies the weeping old man. "Acos aqui que` lous Jansemins moron-it is there the Jasmins die. He embraced me," continued Jasmin, "and was carried away, shutting his blue eyes-five days afterward my grandfather was no more. Then, for the first time, the boy felt what poverty really is. This event struck deep into his mind; the recollection of it has since been constantly present to him, and on one occasion, at least, it exercised a salutary influence on his fortunes. When, at last, more prosperous days came, he found great satisfaction in making a bonfire of the old willow chair in which his forefathers, "all the Jasmins," had been carried to their ladder, at the top of which a plump servant maid was perched, occupied-type of innocence-in feeding pigeons in a dove-cot above her. He mounted the ladder one, two, three, four steps, Kitty turned and utter and both came together to the ground, she uppermost. Kitty continued screaming, and when the luckless wight got upon his legs again, he found scullions, cooks, canons, and little abbés, all the house, in fact, assembled around him. Kitty told the story in her own way, with embellishments, the culprit assures us, and his punishment was immediately pronounced The second begins with an inventory of the family furniture, in which figure, among other things, "three old beds in ruins; six old curtains, which the wind from the cran-ed a scream, the ladder was thrown over nies would have caused to belly out like sails, if they had not been eaten by time and rats into the semblance of sieves; a sideboard frequently subjected to threat of bailiff-it was the only thing worth seizing-and an old wallet hanging in a corner." He had not before remarked the scantiness of their possessions, but his eyes were now opened. He saw how slender were his parents' means, and he learned things he had never dreamed of before that the severe looking woman, who came every morning with an iron pot, bore in it to his grandmother, "sick though still not old," the soup of charity; that the old wallet was what his grandfather used to carry from farmhouse to farmhouse seeking the scanty doles of his former friends; that no old man ever died in their house, but "that as soon as they took to crutches they were sent to the hospital." So it had been from father to son. "Paoure Pepy!-poor grandfather." "So wicked and so young! As Heaven is my guard, I'll see that such conduct shall meet its due reward! Dry bread and prison from to-day, through all the carnival! Such was the peremptory sentence of the principal." Shut up in his cell, Jasmin was far from being miserable. He had, it seems, visions of lovely women, who, "Sweet consolers of disgrace, Never o'er a couch so bare One day, however a bright day for him. -his mother entered the house joyfully. "Jacques," said she, "Jacques, my son, you shall go to school! Your cousin the schoolmaster takes you for nothing." Six months afterward the boy could read-he was diligent and had a good memory-six more and he assisted the priest at mass-six more, and as From these pleasant visions, however, Jasmin a chorister he struck up the Tantum ergo,— awoke to the direful reality of hunger,-a six more and he entered the seminary gra- reality which causes him emphatically to tuitously, six more and he was expelled deny the truth of the proverb, " qui dron from it with shame on his face and curses on minjo"-he who sleeps dines. To tantalize his head. And this, too, was in the very him more, from the valiant spits hard at moment of his first great triumph. He work in the kitchen, ascended, coming had gained a prize-it was only an old cas- through the keyhole, and impelled by the sock-but it was still a prize. His mother "great devil," an odor of unctuous and came and saw it; full of joy was that poor most delectable meats. It is the carnival, mother, and between her kisses she said to and he is in prison, alone and hungry. He him, "Poor thing! you have a good right to becomes desperate, his eye flashes with learn; for, thanks to you, they send us every rage, and at that moment it falls on a cupTuesday a loaf of bread, and this year times board in the wall-high up, but secured are so bad, that God knows it is welcome." only by a wooden pin. The means of ascent Jasmin, very proud, promised repeatedly that are speedily furnished by a table, some he would become a grand avant, and his washing lines, and four chairs; on this ladder, mother went away radiant with joy. His at the risk of his neck, he climbs. Opening father, it was arranged, was to lay his profes- the cupboard, he beholds in the interior four sional hands on the cassock and alter it to the pots; "trembling like a king upon his throne," boy's size. But that vestment Jasmin was he draws one of them toward him; somenever destined to wear. He fell, both thing soft and black flows out on his face literally and figuratively. "The devil, that and trickles to his mouth; he tastesn stigator of evil," led him, it seems, near a "triumph! it is quince marmalade !" "But at this moment who is coming up stairs?-who fumbles at the door?-who opens it?-who enters? O, terror! it is the principal himself-bearing a pardon!" But what a sad and unexpected sight meets his eye! Of course it was all over with Jasmin. There had been forgiveness for his other transgression, but for this there was none-a boy who eats a canon's own particular choice quince marmalade, puts himself beyond the pale of mercy. With a cry of "Out, you devil, out!" the enraged ecclesiastic shook the frail scaffold; Jasmin, followed by a pot or two, tumbled from his bad eminence, and was summarily expelled from the seminary. His face being still besmeared with the stolen sweets, the carnival-keepers, as he ran through the streets, saluted him with jeering cries of "A mask! a mask!" but escaping from his tormentors, he at last got home, sore with his fall, and very hungry. Here he found the table laid, and some beans cooking-but there was no bread. "You need not wait for it," said his mother to her children, sadly but tenderly; "it will not come." They were without bread. "O poverty! O repentance! O well-turned ankles and quince marmalade! O Kitty, and O canon!" -the ration had been stopped because of his misconduct the previous day! After a while his mother casts a glance at her hand, and then exclaiming, "Wait a little-yes, you shall have it!" she goes out. She soon returns with a loaf, and all the family regain their spirits; Jacques alone is serious and watchful-watchful of his motherserious, for he has his fears. They finish their bean-porridge-she prepares to cut the loaf-he observes her closely-observes her left hand. Alas! it was true-"n' abiò plus soun anel"-she had sold her marriage ring! This is the end of the second canto, or "pause." Jasmin here passes over a year of his life, and at the opening of the third canto the schoolboy has become apprentice to a hair-dresser, and is now, as he says, almost a man. Engaged the greater part of each day in adorning outwardly the heads of others, he devoted all his spare hours to storing the interior of his own. Every night the ray of a lamp, shining from a garret window, lit up the neighboring elm-tree; and in his bed, waking the night through, he lulled asleep his griefs by reading, forgetting for a time the ring, the wallet, and the workhouse. So he lived, "unhappy and contented." He also now began to write verses, addressed | in the first place, strangely enough, to the heroine of a novel, to pray her to be his guardian angel. She was, he says, ever in his thoughts: and when, during his occupations of the day, the terrible thought of the workhouse presented itself—as it seems constantly to have done-he had for solace only this sweet unsubstantiality. This of course prevented his minding his proper business, and he confesses it. "How often, when dreaming, in terror or hope, My razor too heedlessly played! And over a visage of lather and soap What staggers and stumbles it made !" No doubt many a worthy citizen of Agen had cause to curse the ideal Estella who possessed the thoughts of the awkward and romantic barber's boy. But from romance-reading Jasmin came to play-going. One evening he chanced to mingle with a crowd assembled before a large house; the doors suddenly opened, and the throng, entering precipitately, bore him along in its current. This gave a new direction to his thoughts; that night Cinderella supplanted poor Estella in his affections. He talked in his sleep, made long speeches, and disturbed his master's house. The ire of the old barber was of course kindled, and in the morning he ascends to his apprentice's garret to scold him. The scene which follows is inimitable. The dreamy, imaginative, easily impressioned boy, lying on the floor of the, room, and just awakened from silvery visions of fairyland and the beautiful Cinderella; the practical, sober, methodical, but withal good-natured master, standing with authority over him, and questioning him, the professional pride of the worthy man as he tells the lad that he is unfit to be a barber, and had better turn player, his horror at finding himself unexpectedly taken at his word,-his broken remonstran ces, half indignation, half pity, and the unlooked-for effect of his chance expression, "Infatuated boy! do you wish to die in the workhouse?"—which, by the terrible reminiscences it calls up, restores the stage-struck apprentice to his proper senses, are all sketched with so masterly a hand, in a few vigorous lines, that the incident, than which nothing could in itself be more commonplace, becomes eminently interesting and dramatic. But it is the peculiar merit of Jasmin, as, indeed, it is his professed aim, to depict the natural, to adhere closely to the true, to represent every-day occurrences, and simply by putting them in their proper light, or by directing on them the illumination of his poetry, to give to even the most ordinary personages and events the effect and attraction which are usually considered as being confined to the romantic, the exciting, and the improb able. Two years went by after the memorable visit to the theatre; Jasmin was now nearly eighteen years of age, the future began to brighten, and at last an important day in his history arrived his own little "saloun" (saloon) for hair-dressing was opened. It was not much frequented at first, customers were few and fortune niggardly, "mais se non plèou, rouzino"-if it did not rain, it drizzled. And soon he became completely happy. "He found in the world," he says, "a spirit that pleased him," he fell in love, that is to say. His wooing was successful; his marriage day came; in a renovated hat, in a blue coat,-new for the second time, and with a shirt of coarse stuff, having a calico front," he carried away his bride, the pleasing, good-natured little woman whom we have seen at Agen. His later history he passes lightly over. 6 "You know the rest," he says, addressing himself to M. Florimond de St. Amant, to whom the "Soubenis" are dedicated. "Fifteen years have passed; the Curl-papers' and other songs have attracted to my shop a little stream of so silvery a nature, that in my poetic ardor I broke to pieces the terrible chair. My fears are gone; so much so, that reading the other day that Pegasus is a horse which carries poets to the almshouse, I filled the whole house with my laughter. I, for my part, have been carried by that steed, not to the almshouse, but to a certain notary's office; and now, in the full pride of my greatness, I rejoice to see myself figuring on the list of the taxgatherer, being the first of my family who has had that honor. It is true, the honor costs something; but no matter, our house shelters us against wind and rain, though behind it is certainly but imperfectly roofed in. But my wife says to me, Cour age! every verse you make is a tile, and it is rafters you are squaring when you write;' and she who at first, when my verses were not so argentiferous, used to lock up my paper and split finest pen and the smoothest paper." my pen, now offers me, with a courteous air, the It is pleasing to find that both the parents of Jasmin lived to see and to profit by their son's success; for the "Soubenis" conclude with a scene in which they, as well as his sisters, are introduced in a comfortable family picture, the only drawback on the happiness of the party being their indignation at some complimentary verses which termed the poet "a son of Apollo," and thereby, as they thought, cast doubts on the fair character of his mother. In the same little shop Jasmin still remains. But his fame soon went forth. In 1835 we find him reciting his verses amid the applause of the critical Academy of Bordeaux; and in 1840, raising to extraordinary enthusiasm an immense mixed multitude at Toulouse. Passing over, however, his other triumphs, we come to his reception at Paris, an account of which he gives in a piece entitled "My Journey." The scene is the saloon of M. Augustin Thierry, the learned and accomplished author of the "History of the Norman Conquest.' The illustrious writer, whose eye a "thick drop serene" has obscured for ever, is seated as usual in his armchair, a melancholy calm upon his fine features, his devoted wife is beside him, around him are assembled the most distinguished people of Paris-poets, critics, orators-the learned, the witty, the imaginative. The eyes of all are turned upon a man who, with the embarrassment of modesty, but with the just confidence of conscious power, prepares to read a poem of his own. He announces it as "The Blind Girl of Castel-Cuillè.” There is a movement of curiosity, not a few looks of incredulity, one or two of the party manifest something approaching to a sneerfor the pretended poet is a hair-dresser, and writes in patois. his southern ardor feels the frost of the atThe effect is chilling for the poor man; mosphere. He has an awful reverence for the great men round him, and he is crushed by their superiority. Their conventional politeness, so different from Gascon warmth, is painfully scrupulous; he is a stranger, too, and so alone. How shall his simple "Abuglo" touch their hearts? He sees that they are resolved not to be influenced in his favor by the mere cu How shall he move such an audience? riosity of the thing-by the phenomenon of | a barber making tolerable verses, and venturing so boldly to recite them on such ground; he sees he must stand or fall by his real merits. Let him describe his own emo tions. "A crowd of learned men and women waited coldly till I should open my lips, to measure my mind and my words. And it is not in Paris as on the banks of the Garonne. At home all are my friends, here all are judges; and he who comes to establish his name, if he does not gain a throne, finds nothing but a tomb. Doubtless they had an amicable air toward me-they even called me a poet; but I saw, by the expression of their eyes, how difficult ny proof would be; and then, none of them understood our sweet, smooth language. I was dumb-I was afraid. I changed from hot to cold, and from cold to hot. In vain the magnificent countenance of the blind man grew bright with kindness toward me-in vain his guardian angel, his gentle companion, touched me with her golden wing. I trembled—I wished to go away." But at last he took courage. He began his "Abuglo," and from the first his success was complete. He was frequently interrupted by the applause of his hearers. That evening was decisive. Twenty-six times, he tells us, within fifteen days, he repeated his recitation, the last of them being before the then royal family at Neuilly. Covered with applause and honor, he returned to his beloved Agen; and the year after he received a substantial proof of the estimation in which his poetry was held, an annual pension of a thousand francs being allotted to him by the Minister of Public Instruction. Since then he has remained perfectly contented in his native town, making occasional tours, and reciting his works to admiring crowds in the different places of the south, but refusing all solicitation to leave his present position. One of the most pleasing of his many pleasing poetical epistles is on this subject, and contains his reasons for not following the advice of a "rich agriculturist near Toulouse, who incessantly wrote to him to go and establish himself in Paris, where he would make his fortune." It is too long to quote entire, but we select from it some passages, of which even the author of the ode, Rectius vives," would have had no cause to be ashamed. "Why do you always repeat to me," he says, "that money is money, and that fame is only fame? My eye is fixed on a laurel; a little sprig of it will, I hope, one day be mine; and compared with that sprig, all the riches of the world are to me as nothing. Besides, I do not know how to use wealth-wealth would spoil me. I cannot em ploy it usefully as you do; you, who while you Full soon my coffers would be drained. "In Agen, then, content and poor, Leave me as now to work and sing. Beneath the shade of ash or thorn, In the same place where I was born. Their chirp of zigo, ziou, ziou, The wandering sparrows quit their homes, and fly The nests where first they felt their feathers The wise man is of other stuff, He loves, when all things verdant beam, In the preceding translation we have endeavored to preserve something of the rhythm of the original, which, in almost all Jasmin's productions, is very arbitrary. He mingles short lines with long lines at pleasure; one of fifteen syllables shall, for instance, precede one of two; to a series of stately hexameters shall succeed a flight of trochaics, in many of which the verse is composed of a single word. Such license, though common enough among French writers in the composition of fables and the like, has never been considered by them admissible in the more elevated style; but Jasmin's innovation |