Though a Maid is a woman, and never forgives
When lovers are false to their vows.

A large part of the poem was devoted to describing Paquita's
sufferings when alone in Rouen waiting till the campaign was over; she
stood writhing at the window bars as she watched happy couples go by;
she suppressed her passion in her heart with a determination that
consumed her; she lived on narcotics, and exhausted herself in dreams.

Almost she died, but still her heart was true;
And when at last her soldier came again,
He found her beauty ever fresh and new--
He had not loved in vain!

"But he, pale and frozen by the cold of Russia, chilled to the very
marrow, met his yearning fair one with a melancholy smile."

The whole poem was written up to this situation, which was worked out
with such vigor and boldness as too entirely justified the Abbe Duret.

Paquita, on reaching the limits set to real love, did not, like Julie
and Heloise, throw herself into the ideal; no, she rushed into the
paths of vice, which is, no doubt, shockingly natural; but she did it
without any touch of magnificence, for lack of means, as it would be
difficult to find in Rouen men impassioned enough to place Paquita in
a suitable setting of luxury and splendor. This horrible realism,
emphasized by gloomy poetic feeling, had inspired some passages such
as modern poetry is too free with, rather too like the flayed
anatomical figures known to artists as _ecorches_. Then, by a highly
philosophical revulsion, after describing the house of ill-fame where