"Unthinking creatures,"he said,"I have come from my gloomy rocks up yonder to open your eyes.You all adore this Franconnette.Behold,she is accursed!While in her cradle her father,the Huguenot,sold her to the devil.He has punished Pascal and Laurent for the light embrace she gave them.
He warned in time and avoid her.The demon alone has a claim to her."The sorcerer ended;sparks of fire surrounded him,and after turning four times round in a circle he suddenly disappeared!
Franconnette's friends at once held aloof from her.They called out to her,"Begone!"All in a maze the girl shuddered and sickened;she became senseless,and fell down on the floor in a swoon.The young people fled,leaving her helpless.And thus ended the second fete which began so gaily.
The grossest superstition then prevailed in France,as everywhere.Witches and warlocks were thoroughly believed in,far more so than belief in God and His Son.The news spread abroad that the girl was accursed and sold to the Evil One,and she was avoided by everybody.She felt herself doomed.At length she reached her grandmother's house,but she could not work,she could scarcely stand.The once radiant Franconnette could neither play nor sing;she could only weep.
Thus ended two cantos of the poem.The third opens with a lovely picture of a cottage by a leafy brookside in the hamlet of Estanquet.The spring brought out the singing-birds to pair and build their nests.They listened,but could no longer hear the music which,in former years,had been almost sweeter than their own.The nightingales,more curious than the rest,flew into the maid's garden;they saw her straw hat on a bench,a rake and watering-pot among the neglected jonquils,and the rose branches running riot.Peering yet further and peeping into the cottage door,the curious birds discovered an old woman asleep in her arm-chair,and a pale,quiet girl beside her,dropping tears upon her lily hands."Yes,yes,it is.Franconnette,"says the poet."You will have guessed that already.A poor girl,weeping in solitude,the daughter of a Huguenot,banned by the Church and sold to the devil!Could anything be more frightful?"Nevertheless her grandmother said to her,"My child,it is not true;the sorcerer's charge is false.He of good cheer,you are more lovely than ever."One gleam of hope had come to Franconnette;she hears that Pascal has defended her everywhere,and boldly declared her to be the victim of a brutal plot.She now realised how great was his goodness,and her proud spirit was softened even to tears.The grandmother put in a good word for Marcel,but the girl turned aside.Then the old woman said,"To-morrow is Easter Day;go to Mass,pray as you never prayed before,and take the blessed bread,proving that you are numbered with His children for ever."The girl consented,and went to the Church of Saint Peter on Easter morning.She knelt,with her chaplet of beads,among the rest,imploring Heaven's mercy.But she knelt alone in the midst of a wide circle.All the communicants avoided her.The churchwarden,Marcel's uncle,in his long-tailed coat,with a pompous step,passed her entirely by,and refused her the heavenly meal.Pascal was there and came to her help.He went forward to the churchwarden and took from the silver plate the crown piece[6]of the holy element covered with flowers,and took and presented two pieces of the holy bread to Franconnette--one for herself,the other for her grandmother.
From that moment she begins to live a new life,and to understand the magic of love.She carries home the blessed bread to the ancient dame,and retires to her chamber to give herself up,with the utmost gratefulness,to the rapturous delight of loving."Ah,"says Jasmin in his poem,"the sorrowing heart aye loveth best!"Yet still she remembers the fatal doom of the sorcerer that she is sold for a price to the demon.All seem to believe the hideous tale,and no one takes her part save Pascal and her grandmother.She kneels before her little shrine and prays to the Holy Virgin for help and succour.
At the next fete day she repaired to the church of Notre Dame de bon Encontre,[7]where the inhabitants of half a dozen of the neighbouring villages had assembled,with priests and crucifixes,garlands and tapers,banners and angels.The latter,girls about to be confirmed,walked in procession and sang the Angelus at the appropriate hours.The report had spread abroad that Franconnette would entreat the Blessed Virgin to save her from the demon.The strangers were more kind to her than her immediate neighbours,and from many a pitying heart the prayer went up that a miracle might be wrought in favour of the beautiful maiden.She felt their sympathy,and it gave her confidence.The special suppliants passed up to the altar one by one--Anxious mothers,disappointed lovers,orphans and children.They kneel,they ask for blessings,they present their candles for the old priest to bless,and then they retire.
Now came the turn of Franconnette.Pascal was in sight and prayed for her success.She went forward in a happy frame of mind,with her taper and a bouquet of flowers.She knelt before the priest.He took the sacred image and presented it to her;but scarcely had it touched the lips of the orphan when a terrible peal of thunder rent the heavens,and a bolt of lightning struck the spire of the church,extinguishing her taper as well as the altar lights.This was a most unlucky coincidence for the terrified girl;and,cowering like a lost soul,she crept out of the church.The people were in consternation."It was all true,she was now sold to the devil!
