The village of Rossignol (so named, probably, on account of the abundance of nightingales in the neighbourhood) was inhabited by very poor, but very happy people. It is true that, in common with other cultivators of the fickle earth, they had sometimes to mourn the overthrow of the husbandman's hopes; and that even their remote and lonely situation did not always protect them from the exactions of those whom birth, violence, or accident had made the lords of the domain. But in such cases, the villagers of Rossignol had a resource, limited, indeed, and attended by hardship, and even danger, but, to a certain extent, absolutely unfailing. It must not be supposed, however, that, even in an Arcadia like this, "The course of true love _always_ did run smooth." There was one young girl, called Julie, who was cruel enough to have depopulated a whole nation of lovers. She was the most beautiful creature, it is said, that ever skimmed the surface of this breathing world. Her light brown hair was illumined in the bends of the curls with gleams resembling those of auburn, and it was so long and luxuriant, that when, in the ardour of the chase, it became unbound, and floated in clouds around her, that seemed just touched on their golden summits by the sun, she looked more like a thing of air than of earth. Nor was the illusion dissipated when, flinging away with her white arm the redundant tresses, her face flashed upon the gazer. There was nothing in it of that tinge of earth--for there is no word for the thought--which identifies the loveliest and happiest faces with mortality. There was no shade of care upon her dazzling brow--no touch of tender thought upon her lip--no flash, even of hope, in her radiant eyes. Her expression spoke neither of the past nor the future--neither of graves nor altars. She was a thing of mere physical life--a gay and glorious creature of the sun, and the wind, and the dews; who exchanged as carelessly and unconsciously as a flower, the sweet smell of her beauty for the bounties of nature, and pierced the ear of heaven with her mirthful songs, from nothing higher than the instinct of a bird. It seemed as if what was absent in her mind had been added to her physical nature. She had the same excess of animal life which is observed in young children; but, unlike them, her muscular force was great enough to give it play. Her walk was like a bounding dance, and her common speech like a gay and sparkling song;--her laugh echoed from hill to hill, like the tone of some sweet, but wild and shrill instrument of music. She out-stripped the boldest of the youths in the chase; skimmed like some phantom shape along the edge of precipices approached even by the wild goat with fear; and looked round with careless joy, from pinnacles which interrupted the flight of the eagle through the air.