. . . .  In her passionate fire
    Every man would have swooned from the heat,
  When she at love’s feast, in her fervid desire,
    As yet had but taken her seat.

“And yet she could quit the joys of Seville, its woods and fields of orange-trees, for a Norman soldier who won her love and carried her away to his hearth and home.  She did not weep for her Andalusia, the Soldier was her whole joy. . . .  But the day came when he was compelled to start for Russia in the footsteps of the great Emperor.”

Nothing could be more dainty than the description of the parting between the Spanish girl and the Normandy Captain of Artillery, who, in the delirium of passion expressed with feeling worthy of Byron, exacted from Paquita a vow of absolute fidelity, in the Cathedral at Rouen in front of the alter of the Blessed Virgin, who

  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 the Andalusian ended her days, the writer came back to the ballad at the opening: 

  Paquita now is faded, shrunk, and old,
    But she it was who sang: 

  “If you but knew the fragrant plain,
  The air, the sky, of golden Spain,” etc.