Why! she still lives, her voice still sounds; like her, the seasons pass, the bells ring out their peals, and though a hundred thousand years may roll away, they will still be sounding and ringing!" Jasmin has been compared to Dante.

But there is this immense difference between them.

Dante was virtually the creator of the Italian language, which was in its infancy when he wrote his 'Divine Comedy' some six hundred years ago, while Jasmin was merely reviving a gradually-expiring dialect.

Drouilhet de Sigalas has said that Dante lived at the sunrise of his language, while Jasmin lived at its sunset.

Indeed, Gascon was not a written language, and Jasmin had to collect his lexicon, grammar, and speech mostly from the peasants who lived in the neighbourhood of Agen.