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she kissed it, and, blessing me for my kindness, expired upon my lap.

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Annichin is interred in the churchyard of

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far from the spot where she perished; the evening breezes are the only sighs, and the moonbeams the only tears that lament her fate. Her wishes were accordingly fulfilled; but a letter, in which was returned the portrait of her lover, informed me, that her Ludiwig had pined away in sorrow for his lost, though not forgotten, Annichin. To me, her last treasures were only sad mementos of her fate, and I determined to place them by her side. It was one night when the stars were shining forth in the brilliancy of their glories, when the moon was shrouded, as if in token of her sorrows, that I disturbed the fair, but broken-hearted Annichin, there to inter the only earthly remains of her adoring lover; and I thought, as I completed the deed, that the spirit of the maid greeted me with a smile for my task.

THE FESTIVAL OF THE ROSE.

It was in the latter part of May, that the Festival of the Rose was held in the little village of Alliêre, in Provence. It had been the custom for years, many more than the memory of any inhabitant of the country could remember, to hold a sort of rustic revel under this name, where the fairest and most virtuous of the village maidens was adorned by her unenvying companions with that symbol of purity and loveliness a white rose. It is not consistent with our present purpose to trace the origin of a ceremony which is as old perhaps as the barbarian inhabitants of the land, and which, at least, may be considered as one of the first indications of civilization. In the year 1234 the Count Raimond Alliêre had resolved to celebrate it with more than usual pomp, for his niece, the daughter of a beloved brother who had died in the Holy Land, had just quitted the neighbouring convent in which she had been educated, and was about to become the mistress and the ornament of her doting uncle's castle. The day on which the Festival of the Rose was to be held was that of her nativity, and her uncle intended that she should

offer herself as a competitor for the prize. Perhaps even if she had been less unequivocally entitled to it her claim would have been allowed; but she had no need to call to her aid the advantages of her station. Her charms spoke for themselves, and her benevolence had been so often exercised upon the poor villagers, that they looked upon her as one of those beneficent beings of another world, which the imaginations of poets feign to come down to earth sometimes for the succour of its suffering children. Still, in the count's offering his niece as a candidate for the white rose, there was a proof of that simplicity which was a part of his character, and which was so often, at the period of which we speak, to be found in company with the sterner virtues.

Perhaps, too, there was another motive which was not without its influence in the old man's mind. It had been the dying wish of his niece's father that she should marry the son of his companion in arms, Gui de Besancour; and when the beautiful Claude had attained that age at which it was thought time to fix her future destiny, this proposition was made to the young heir of Besancour. He bore his father's name of Gui, and had given fair earnest of keeping that name no less illustrious than it had been made by a long line of ancestors. He had gained honour beyond his years in the battles of his country, and perhaps some of the vanity of a young man led him to decline too hastily the proposal that had been made to marry him, in pursuance of a dead man's will, to a lady whom he had never seen. He replied to the count's messenger, that he was about to take a command in Spain, and that, as his absence from his native country might be of uncertain duration, he relinquished all thoughts of the honour which was intended him by such an alliance. The count, stung with this cool reply, which however admitted of no further consideration, resolved that his niece's beauty should at least be seen and acknowledged; and, therefore, at the approaching Festival of the Rose, he held a grand tourney, to which he invited the neighbouring barons and knights. He had little doubt that his niece would carry off the prize at the first, and he intended that she should display among her equals those charms to which he was sure all who saw her must pay homage.

The young Gui de Besancour was in no hurry to go to

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Spain; the news of the tourney determined him to go, but in disguise, to the castle of Allière, to see the lady whom fortune had intended to thrust upon him without his asking. Accompanied only by an esquire, who had, like himself, some skill in music, in the garb of troubadours-a disguise then commonly adopted by people of all ranks-he repaired to Allière. He reached that place on the evening of the day on which the Festival of the Rose was held, and the tourney was to begin on the morrow.

The Count Gui was wholly unprepared for the nature of the scene to which he was thus unexpectedly introduced. He had heard of the Festival of the Rose, and knew indistinctly the nature of the ceremony, but he did not know the manners of the Provençal people, nor the extreme simplicity with which they conducted this ceremony, a simplicity which partook more of the olden times to which its origin belonged than to the then present period. The Count Raimond and his noble friends, male as well as female, were dressed in the garb of peasants. They mingled in the sports of their tenants without ceremony, the difference of rank was forgotten, and the father of his people was treated by them with that inward and heartfelt respect which a father deserves, but without any of that untoward homage which, in a more courtly company, his station would have entitled him to. The lovely Claude, dressed in pure white, with no other decoration than the charms which heaven had bestowed her, and crowned with the one white rose which her undisputed beauty had won, moved among the village girls like one of them. The peasants were all in their best clothes, and in the frank hilarity of the moment no stranger could have told which of them was gentle and which simple.

On a throne of turf strewn with flowers, on which a bower of roses was erected, sate Claude, surrounded by her fair companions. A table was spread beneath a trellised vine, at the side where the Count Raimond and the elder part of the company sate. Some minstrels were at the opposite side, who were preparing to accompany the dance which was about to begin, when a shout from some of the peasants announced the arrival of strangers. The Count Gui, with his lute slung upon his shoulder, and followed by Raoul, his esquire, who had faithfully served him, in war as L. 36. 2.

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