Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-02-24
"THE COUNTESS ROMANCE.

tanned until the committee reports.
"THE COUNTESS ROMANCE.
4 Story Told at the G9ace Of the Heroine OF
WhittieI's Poem.
Rocks Village, where lived Aunt Nose,
The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale,
is charming little nook on the Merrimac
river, away from the busy lines of traffic
A place for idle eyes and ears,
A cobwebbed nook of dreams;
Left by the stream whose waves are years
The stranded village seems.
And it is here that Whittier also found,
amid
Old customs, hamlets, superstitions, fears,
All that lies buried under fifty years,
the incidents for his sweet poem of 'The
Countess" ''The Countess" was young
girl of scarcely twenty years when the
Count Francis Vipart came to Rocks vii
lage with a friend, both exiles from the
Island of Gaudeloupe. He saw Mary In
gals, beautiful, golden haired, blue-eyed
girl, the belle of the little village, and her
beauty, together with gentle and sweet
disposition. attracted him at once. He
walked with her along the struggling
road" which comes down cover the wooded
northern RIDGE to her
church standing near the
burial ground on the land chat slopes
against the west" The church is now re-
moved; but later in the afternoon of the
day on which we visited the place we met
an old gentleman of eighty who remem-
bered the church, and the time when only
two slept in the graveyard, which is now
full. He also informed US that the wor-
shippers were called together by the sound
of horn.
''The Countess was the daughter of
laboring man, and an L of the house where
she was born is still standing. And it was
here in these ancient rooms that the little
love romance of Rocks village was lived
out.
''Her simple daily life he saw
By homeliest duties tried,
In all things by an uutaught law
OF fitness justified.
''For her aside his rank he laid:
He took the hue and tone
OF lowly life and toll, and made
Her simple ways his own.'
There is still living in neighboring town
a white-haired old lady of eighty, who
treasures up with pious care set of knives
and forks which were bridal gift from
the count to his young wife; and she will
relate to the curious listener how the Count
Francis Vipart established evening dances
in the village for the young people, and
how devoted he was to his beautiful wife.
''My mother" said she. "knew her we'll.
and often used to say that she was the
most beautiful girl she had ever seen, so
gentle and kind"
nate in the afternoon of that autumn day
we stood by the grave of the countess,
marked by slate head and foot stones. On
the headstone is the inscription:
MARY,
Wife of FRANCIS VIPART,
of Guadeloupe,
died Jan. 5, 1907,
act. q.
the last u in Guadeloupe being omitted
and placed over the other letters afterward.
The headstone is quite deliberately orna-
mented with a funeral urn and weeping
willows at the top, like an ancient sampler,
and elaborate though rudely carved col
umns at the. sides. On the foot stone are
simply the words:
MARY vIPART, 1907.
Before leaving [ made sketch of the
spot, with its sere dead ferns, its tangle of
wild brier vines, crimson-leaved by frost,
and the short brown spires of withered
grass growing in tufts over the moundless
grave.
'Ah! life is brief, though love be long;''
and short indeed it was to the lovely Mary
Ingalls,, who lived out her love romance in
one brief year, and cameto her long rest
in the graveyard, near the village church.
Naturally delicate and frail, she sacrificed
herself by unremitting exertions at the
bedside of her sick mother, and a quick
consumption ended all too soon her beluti-
full and loving life.
The count was inconsolable after her
death; he parted with everything that
could remind him of his gentle wife, and
finding the scenes of his married life too
painful after his short year OF happiness,
he left the villagene never to return.
1 almost wish to pass over the sequel of
Count Francis Vipart in silence. AS re-
lated to us by Miss E. l. Davis, who wrote
to Guadeloupe and obtained his subsequent
history, the count returned there after the
death of his beautiful Mary, was married
again, and left many descendants on the
island, where he is buried.
And this was in 1907, an era of great
events in France. Eylau and Friedland
were fought; Napoleon was at the zenith
of his power. Glory called the Frenchman
to the victorious eagles of his great emper-
or. Vipart should have been incon solable,
and drowned his sorrow in the excitement
of the battlefield. He should gloriously
have closed his romance by falling in the
disastrous retreat from Moscow, the last of
his regiment or in doing some heroic deed
for the memory of his lost darling. But
what prosaic end!-he marries, and is
the father OF family.
Il NdrrOU Escape.
Los Angeles Herald, Feb. 16.