My heart oft questions, with discouraged pause, Does music linger in the slackening chords? Yet, friend, I feel not that all power is fled, The intangible gift of thought, whose silver thread So, in the brooding calm that follows woe, As, when some earthly storm hath ceased to blow, swell; After the maddening wrecking and the roar, The wild high dash, the moaning sad retreat, Some cold slow wave creeps faintly to the shore, And leaves a white shell at the gazer's feet. Take, then, the poor gift in thy faithful hand; Measure its worth not merely by my own, But hold it dear as gathered from the sand Where so much wreck of youth and hope lies strown. So, if in years to come my words abideWords of the dead to stir some living brainWhen thoughtful readers lay my book aside, Musing on all it tells of joy and pain, Towards thee, good heart, towards thee their thoughts shall roam, Whose unforsaking faith time hath not riven; And to their minds this just award shall come, 'Twas a TRUE friend to whom such thanks were given ! 7 INTRODUCTION. Ir is pleasant to me to be able to assure my readers that the story I have undertaken to versify is in no respect a fiction. I have added nothing to the beautiful and striking simplicity of the events it details. I have respected that mournful 66 romance of real life" too much to spoil its lessons by any poetical licence. Nothing is mine in this story but the language in which it is told. The portrait of the Countess de la Garaye is copied from an authentic picture preserved in one of the religious houses of Dinan, in Brittany, where the Hospital of Incurables, founded by her and her husband, still subsists. The ruined château and its ivy-covered gateway are faithfully given, without embellishment or alteration, as they appeared when I saw them in the year 1860. The château is rapidly crumbling. The memory of the De la Garayes is fresh in the memory of the people. They died within two years of each other, and were buried among their poor in the district of Taden; having, both during their lives and by will after death, contributed the greater part of their fortune to the wisest and most carefully conducted charities. Among the bequests left by the Count de la Garaye, was one especially interesting to this country; for he left a large sum to the prisoners of Rennes and Dinan, consisting principally of English officers and soldiers who were suffering, in these crowded foreign jails, all the horrors which the philanthropic Howard endeavoured to reform in his own land; and which at one time caused a sort of plague to break out in Dinan. This humane bequest is the more remarkable, as the Count was, in spite of the gentleness and generosity of his feelings towards imprisoned foes, patriotic enough to insist on marching to oppose the landing of the English on the coast of France in 1746, though he was then upwards of seventy years of age! He was of noble family, being the younger son of Guillaume Marot, Count de la Garaye, Governor of the town and castle of Dinan ;—that strong fortress which Anne of Brittany, in her threatened dominions, playfully termed the "key of her casket." By the death of his elder brother, he became inheritor of the family honours, and married Mademoiselle de la Motte-Piquet, niece |