To m'sieur your husband
As well as to you:

"You have just been bound, madam' la mariee,
With bonds of gold
That only death unbinds:

"You will go no more to balls or gay assemblies;
You must stay at home
While we shall go.

"Have you thought well how you are pledged to be
True to your spouse,
And love him like yourself?

"Receive these flowers our hands do now present you;
Alas! your fleeting honors
Will fade as they."

This native air (as sweet as that adapted by Chateaubriand to _Ma
soeur, te souvient-il encore_), sung in this little town of the Brie
district, must have been to the ears of a Breton maiden the touchstone
of imperious memories, so faithfully does it picture the manners and
customs, the surroundings and the heartiness of her noble old land,
where a sort of melancholy reigns, hardly to be defined; caused,
perhaps, by the aspect of life in Brittany, which is deeply touching.
This power of awakening a world of grave and sweet and tender memories
by a familiar and sometimes lively ditty, is the privilege of those
popular songs which are the superstitions of music,--if we may use the
word "superstition" as signifying all that remains after the ruin of a