These circumstances excited my curiosity, and I made some inquiries about her, which were answered with readiness and intelligence by a priest of the neighbouring chapel.  Our conversation drew together several of the by-standers, each of whom had something to communicate, and from them all I gathered the following particulars.

Annette Delarbre was the only daughter of one of the higher order of farmers, or small proprietors, as they are called, who lived at Pont l’Eveque, a pleasant village not far from Honfleur, in that rich pastoral part of Lower Normandy called the Pays d’Auge.  Annette was the pride and delight of her parents, and was brought up with the fondest indulgence.  She was gay, tender, petulant, and susceptible.  All her feelings were quick and ardent; and having never experienced contradiction or restraint, she was little practised in self-control:  nothing but the native goodness of her heart kept her from running continually into error.

Even while a child, her susceptibility was evinced in an attachment which she formed to a playmate, Eugene La Forgue, the only son of a widow, who lived in the neighbourhood.  Their childish love was an epitome of maturer passion; it had its caprices, and jealousies, and quarrels, and reconciliations.  It was assuming something of a graver character, as Annette entered her fifteenth and Eugene his nineteenth year, when he was suddenly carried off to the army by the conscription.

It was a heavy blow to his widowed mother, for he was her only pride and comfort; but it was one of those sudden bereavements which mothers were perpetually doomed to feel in France, during the time that continual and bloody wars were incessantly draining her youth.  It was a temporary affliction also to Annette, to lose her lover.  With tender embraces, half childish, half womanish, she parted from him.  The tears streamed from her blue eyes, as she bound a braid of her fair hair round his wrist; but the smiles still broke through; for she was yet too young to feel how serious a thing is separation, and how many chances there are, when parting in this wide world, against our ever meeting again.

Weeks, months, years flew by.  Annette increased in beauty as she increased in years, and was the reigning belle of the neighbourhood.  Her time passed innocently and happily.  Her father was a man of some consequence in the rural community, and his house was the resort of the gayest of the village.  Annette held a kind of rural court; she was always surrounded by companions of her own age, among whom she alone unrivalled.  Much of their time was passed in making lace, the prevalent manufacture of the neighbourhood.  As they sat at this delicate and feminine labour, the merry tale and sprightly song went round; none laughed with a lighter heart than Annette; and if she sang, her voice was perfect melody.  Their evenings were enlivened by the dance, or by those pleasant social games so prevalent among the French; and when she appeared at the village ball on Sunday evenings, she was the theme of universal admiration.