Sainte-beuve, the prince of French critics, said of the work:-- "In all his compositions Jasmin has a natural, touching idea; it is a history, either of his invention, or taken from some local tradition.
With his facility as an improvisatore, aided by the patois in which he writes,...

when he puts his dramatis personae into action, he endeavours to depict their thoughts, all their simple yet lively conversation, and to clothe them in words the most artless, simple, and transparent, and in a language true, eloquent, and sober: never forget this latter characteristic of Jasmin's works."{5} M.de Lavergne says of Franconnette, that, of all Jasmin's work, it is the one in which he aimed at being most entirely popular, and that it is at the same time the most noble and the most chastened.

He might also have added the most chivalrous.

"There is something essentially knightly," says Miss Preston, "in Pascal's cast of character, and it is singular that at the supreme crisis of his fate he assumes, as if unconsciously, the very phraseology of chivalry.
"Some squire (donzel) should follow me to death.

It is altogether natural and becoming in the high-minded smith." M.Charles Nodier--Jasmin's old friend--was equally complimentary in his praises of Franconnette.