-Nf "T~"^
 
 ^ 1 1^ 
 
 DC 
 611 
 
 Janvier - 
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 ^os Angeles 
 
 Form L 1 
 
 
 •DO 
 
 
 CbW 
 
 
 P^^ 
 
 8J2
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 . rc ■ 1S2! 
 
 (iOV 12 
 
 jLOi. 
 
 I 
 
 . , -2.0 '19?" 
 
 'JAH 3 1939 
 
 APR S 1B40 
 
 Form L-9-15ni 8,'24
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE
 
 .MISTRAL.
 
 AN EMBASSY 
 TO PROVENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS A. JANVIER 
 
 S6CI U6u FELIBRIGE 
 
 jj/T 
 
 
 y n^. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 1893
 
 Copyright, 1893, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 THE DE VINNE MESS,
 
 
 TO 
 
 C. A. J.
 
 THE NEW TROUBADOURS 
 
 (AVIGNON, 1879) 
 
 They said that all the troubadours had flown, — 
 No bird to flash a wing or swell a throat ! 
 But as we journeyed down the rushing Rhone 
 To Avignon, what joyful note on note 
 
 Burst forth beneath thy shadow, O Ventour! 
 
 Whose eastward forehead takes the dawn divine: 
 Ah, dear Provence ! ah, happy troubadour, 
 And that sweet, mellow, antique song of thine ! 
 
 First Roumanille, the leader of the choir, 
 
 Then graceful Matthieu, tender, sighing, glowing, 
 Then Wyse all fancy, Aubanel all fire, 
 
 And Mistral, mighty as the north-wind's blowing; 
 And youthful Gras, and lo ! among the rest 
 A mother-bird who sang above her nest. 
 
 Richard Watson Gilder.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 PART FIRST 
 
 H 
 
 \I) \vc not cfone roundabout throuirh de- 
 vious ways in Languedoc — being- thereto 
 beguiled h) ihe flesh-pots of Colhas, and the 
 charms of the ducal city of Uzes, and a proper 
 desire to look upon the Pont du Card, and a 
 longing for the shade of an illusive forest — 
 we might ha\e made the journey from Nimes 
 to Avignon not in a week, but in a single day. 
 Mad we made the journe)- ])y rail, taking the 
 noon express, we could have covered the dis- 
 tance in three minutes less than a single hour. 
 The railroad, of course, was out of the ques- 
 tion. Geoffroi Rudel, even in the fever of his 
 longing to take ship for Tripoli, and there 
 breathe out his life and lo\e toijeiher at his
 
 2 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 lady's feet, never would have consented to 
 travel from Bordeaux to Cette by the rapide. 
 To me, a troubadour's representative, the ac- 
 credited Ambassador of an American poet to 
 his friends and fellows of Provence, the rapide 
 equally was impossible. Strictly, the nice pro- 
 prieties of the case required that I should go 
 upon my embassy on horseback or on foot. 
 Consideration for the Ambassadress, however, 
 forbade walking; and the only horses for hire 
 in Nimes were round little ponies of the Ca- 
 margue, not nearly up to my weight — smaller, 
 even, than El Chico Alazan : whose size, in 
 relation to my size, was wont to excite derisive 
 comment among my friends in Mexico. The 
 outcome of it all was that — compromising be- 
 tween the twelfth and the nineteenth centu- 
 ries — we decided to drive. 
 
 By a friend in whom we had every confi- 
 dence, we were commended to an honest liv- 
 ery-man, one Noe Mourgue. It was ten in 
 the morninsf when we went to the stables. 
 Outside the door a lithe young fellow — a Cata- 
 lonian, with crisp black hair, a jaunty black 
 mustache, and daredevil black eyes — was 
 rubbing down a horse. To him we applied 
 ourselves.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 3 
 
 "M'sieu' Noe is absent upon an affair," the 
 Catalan replied. "He is a witness at the Pa- 
 lais de Justice. It is niost provoking. But he 
 surely will return at noon. That is of neces- 
 sity — it is his breakfast hour. Even a court 
 of justice is not so barbarous as to keep a man 
 from his breakfast. Is it not so ? " 
 
 We looked at carriai^es in the remise — it 
 all was delightfully like Yorick, and the 
 "desoblisfeant." and Monsieur Dessein — but 
 found nothinc: to serve our turn. The Cata- 
 Ian cheered us with the assurance that pre- 
 cisely what we wanted would come in that 
 very night. At the moment, he explained, 
 a commercial gent had it upon the road. It 
 was a carriaij:e of one seat, with a hood which 
 could be raised or lowered, and in the rear 
 was a locker wherein m'sieu'-madame could 
 carry their samples with great convenience. 
 It was in constant request among commercial 
 folk, this carriage — not because of its elegance, 
 but because of its comfort: it ran so smoothly 
 that driving in it was like a dream! 
 
 A little after noon we returned to the sta- 
 bles. The Catalan had vanished, and the 
 only live thing visible was a very old dog 
 asleep on a truss of straw in the sun. The
 
 4 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 dog slowly roused himself, and gave an aged 
 bark or two without rising from his place ; 
 whereupon a woman came down the spiral 
 stair from the dwelling-place above. She was 
 in a fine state of indignation, and replied to 
 our question as to the whereabouts of the 
 proprietor hotly. "The breakfast of M'sieu' 
 Noe is waitinor for him," she said. 'Tt has 
 been waiting for more than a quarter of an 
 hour. If he delays another instant the whole 
 of it will perish ! What are these judges 
 thinking of that they keep an honest man 
 from his breakfast? It is an outraije ! It is 
 a crime ! " 
 
 Even as she thus wrathfully delivered her- 
 self, Noe returned; but with so harried and 
 hungry a look that 't was plain this was no 
 time to make a barofain with him. We as- 
 sured him that our matter did not press ; 
 bade him eat his breakfast in peace, and to 
 take his time over it ; and to come to us, 
 when it was ended, at our hotel — the Cheval 
 Blanc. 
 
 When he presented himself, a couple of 
 hours later, he was in the most amiable of 
 moods, and our bargain was struck briskly. 
 Provided, he said, that we took the horse and
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 5 
 
 carriatre for not less than a week — here I in- 
 terpolated that we should want it for a con- 
 siderably lonj^er period — we should have it 
 for six francs a day ; and, also, monsieur was 
 to pay for the food of the horse. Nothing- 
 could be more reasonable than these terms. 
 We accepted them without more words. 
 
 " And what sort of a horse does monsieur 
 require ? " 
 
 Monsieur replied that he required simply 
 a good average horse; neither a sheep, nor 
 yet a wild bull. 
 
 "Ah, the Ponette is precisely the animal 
 suited to monsieur's needs. She is a brave 
 beast ! Perhaps monsieur will not think her 
 handsome, but he will acknowledge her 
 worth — for she is wonderful to go! He must 
 not hurr\' her. She is of a resolute disposi- 
 tion, and prefers to do her w^ork in her own 
 way. Put if monsieur will give her her head, 
 she will accomplish mar\-els — forty, even 
 fifty, kilometers in a single day." And as 
 to the carriage, Monsieur Noe declared 
 briefly that it was fit for the Pope. 
 
 The excellent Noe, be it remembered, 
 came to us fr('sh from thc! Palais i\{- justice, 
 ami the strain dI dLli\erinL: himseU imdcr
 
 6 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 oath. We caught his veracity, as it were, 
 on the rebound. There was truth in his 
 statement, but the percentage of this element 
 was not high. The Ponette, stocky, stoHd, 
 did have a considerable amount of dull en- 
 durance ; but she was very much lazier than 
 she was long. The carriage did run easily, 
 for its springs were relaxed with age ; but it 
 was quite the shabbiest carriage that I ever 
 saw. 
 
 In truth, when this odd outfit came to the 
 door of the Cheval Blanc, the next morning, 
 I had grave doubts as to the propriety of 
 makinfj use of it. Had the matter concerned 
 myself alone, I should not have hesitated so 
 much as a single instant. In small affairs I 
 am no stickler, being well enough content to 
 dispense with forms, provided I can compass 
 substantialities. My position, however, was 
 not personal, but representative ; and as a 
 diplomat I was especially bound to respect 
 what an eminent legal writer has termed "the 
 salutary but sanctionless code called- the corri- 
 ity of nations" — being that courteous and 
 friendly understanding by which each nation 
 respects the laws and usages of every other, 
 so far as this is possible without prejudice to
 
 AN EMBASSY TO I'ROVENCE 7 
 
 its own interests and riohts. Would not the 
 discourtesy, not to say downright unfriendH- 
 ness, of associating- the Embassy with a con- 
 veyance so hopelessly undignihed, I asked 
 niyselt, traverse botli the spirit and the letter 
 of this code? And l:)y accepting it, would I 
 not therefore imperil tlie success of my Mis- 
 sion at its very start? TrulN', 't was as vexing 
 a problem as ever an ambassador just starting 
 on his travels w^as forced to solve. 
 
 Fortunately, one of the troubadours of 
 Nimes happened along just then, and put 
 heart into me. He hatl come to see us off 
 upon our journey, and had Ijrought to each 
 of us, for a farewell offering, a poem in Pro- 
 vencal. They were exquisite, these little lays; 
 and especially did the soul of thirteenth cen- 
 tury song irradiate the one entitled " Uiio 
 I'cspoiiso^^ — which was addressed in what 1 
 am confident was purely imaginative r('[)ly 
 to a strictly non-existent " Nourado," on the 
 absolutely baseless assumiJtion that she; had 
 ask((l him, "What is Love?" I state the 
 case with this handsome series of ([ualif)ing 
 negations because — tliis troubadour bcnng a 
 stout gentleman, rising sixty, most happily 
 married to a charming wife — the inference
 
 8 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 that his verses indicated a disoosition to em- 
 ulate the divided allegiance of Bernard de 
 Ventadour is not tenable. But that Bernard 
 would have been proud to own this delicately 
 phrased and gracefully turned poem will sur- 
 prise no one learned in the modern poetry of 
 Provence and Lanofuedoc when I add that its 
 writer was Monsieur Louis Bard. 
 
 When we had accepted gratefully his of- 
 fering of lays, I opened to him my doubts in 
 regard to the fitness of our equipage ; which 
 doubts he resolved promptly by quoting from 
 the rules laid down for the guidance of trou- 
 badours (and, therefore, for the embassadors 
 of troubadours) by Amanieu de Sescas, a 
 recognized past-master in the arts of love 
 and war. A proper troubadour, according 
 to this Gascon authority of the thirteenth 
 century, must have "a horse of seven years 
 or more, brisk, vigorous, docile, lacking no- 
 thing for the march." Monsieur Bard de- 
 clared that the Ponette fulfilled these several 
 conditions, excepting only that of briskness, 
 to a nicety. " Take care never to wear a 
 ripped garment," wrote the Sieur de Sescas; 
 "better is it to wear one torn. The first 
 shows a slovenly nature ; the second, only
 
 AN EMBASSY TO TKOVENCE 9 
 
 poverty." Applying this rule to the car- 
 riage, Monsieur Bard pointed out that while 
 the slits in the leather were many, the rips 
 were insignificantly few. And in triumphant 
 conclusion he quoted : " There is no great 
 merit in being well dressed when one is rich ; 
 but nothing pleases more, or has more the 
 air of good breeding, than to be serviceably 
 dressed when one has not the wherewithal to 
 provide fine attire." 
 
 As our friend knew, this summing up of the 
 matter fitted our case to a hair. More than 
 satisfied with his reasoning, I ordered the 
 valise to be stowed in the locker (in lieu of 
 the samples which the Catalan had expected 
 us to carr)- there) ; we mounted into our 
 chariot ; our poet bade us God-speed ; the 
 Ponette moved forward sluggishly — and the 
 Embassy w^as under way ! 
 
 II 
 
 Ol'K first intention had been to drive direct 
 to Avignon ; and we did, in fact, go out from 
 Nimes by the Avignon road. But there was
 
 lo AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 not the least need for hurry : the troubadours 
 of Provence did not even dream that an 
 American embassy was on its way to them ; 
 there was no especial reason why we should 
 be anywhere at any particular time. And 
 out of these atjreeable conditions came 
 quickly our decision to drift for a while along 
 the pleasant ways of Languedoc, taking such 
 happiness as for our virtues should be given 
 us, before we headed the lazy little Ponette 
 eastward, and crossed the Rhone. 
 
 The tiny ducal city of Uzes seemed to be 
 a good objective point ; and it was the more 
 alluring because on the way thither — at the 
 village of Collias, on the Gardon — was an 
 inn kept by one Bargeton, at which, as we 
 knew by experience, an excellent breakfast 
 could be obtained. It was the breakfast that 
 settled matters. At St. Gervasy we turned 
 northward from the highway into a cross- 
 country road, a chejuin vicinal ; passed 
 through the rocky gai'rigue region, and 
 clown to the river throutrh a canon that 
 seemed to have gone adrift from the Sierra 
 Madre ; crossed the Gardon by a suspen- 
 sion-bridge, and so came into Collias an hour 
 after noon.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE il 
 
 On a very sniall amount of structural capi- 
 tal, the inn at Collias supports no less than 
 three names. Along the end of it is painted 
 in large letters "Cafe du Midi"; along the 
 front, in larger letters, "Hotel Bargeton " ; 
 over the main entrance is the enticing leg- 
 end " Restaurant Parisien." Our previous 
 visit had been upon a Sunday. Then the 
 establishment was crowded. Now it was 
 deserted. As we drove through the arched 
 gateway into the courtyard the only living 
 creatures in si^ht were a flock of chickens, 
 and two white cats with black tails. All the 
 doors and windows were tight shut — for 
 breakfast long since was over, and this was 
 the tinie of day divinely set apart for sleep. 
 
 The noise of our wheels aroused Monsieur 
 Bargeton. Presently a door opened, and he 
 slowly thrust forth his head and stared at us 
 drowsily and doubtfull)-. Then, slowl)', he 
 withdrew his head and closed the door. 
 PVom the fact that some minutes elapsed be- 
 fore he came forili in his shirt-sleeves, we 
 inferred that at liis hrst semi-appearance his 
 attire had been even less comi)lete. 
 
 " Yes, yes," he said, s|)eaking in an injured 
 tone, "breakfast can !»< had, ot course. iUit
 
 12 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 it will not be a good breakfast, and it will 
 not be ready soon. The time for breakfast is 
 long past. Everything must be prepared." 
 
 Fortunately, the end was better than this 
 bad beginning promised. As he unharnessed 
 the Ponette and stabled her, he shook off a 
 little of his slumbrous heaviness and his dis- 
 position toward us grew less severe. The 
 old woman whom he summoned to his coun- 
 sels, from some hidden depth of the house, 
 put still more heart into him. After a con- 
 ference with her, while we sat on a stone 
 bench beneath a tree in the courtyard, he 
 came to us with a statement full of encour- 
 aeement. It was all riMit about the break- 
 fast, he declared. Monsieur and madame 
 should be served with an omelet and sau- 
 sages and fried potatoes ; and then he came 
 again to say that monsieur and madame 
 should have a good cutlet and a salad ; and 
 yet later, with triumph, he announced that 
 there was a melon for the dessert. 
 
 It was our fancy to have our breakfast 
 served on the great stone table in the court- 
 yard. Monsieur Bargeton did not approve 
 of this arrangement — the table, he said, was 
 only for teamsters and such common folk —
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 13 
 
 but lie )ieklccl the point gTaccfull)-. Over 
 one c'lul of llu- tal)lc lie spread a clean white 
 cloth ; set forth a service of clean, cc:)arse 
 chinaware ; brought us \ er\- fair wine in a 
 wine-cooler improvised from a watering-pot, 
 and then the omelet was served, and our feast 
 began. 
 
 No teamsters came to interfere with us. 
 TIk; onK' su<''Ofestion ot c^ne was a smart 
 black wagon, on which, in gilded letters, was 
 the legend : " Entrepot de Bieres, Uzes." 
 While we were breakfasting, the beer-man 
 came out from the inn, hitched up his horse, 
 and drove away. He seemed to be surprised 
 to find us eatinij there beside his wa^ron — 
 but he said never a word to us, and never a 
 word did we say to him. The black-tailed 
 white cats breakfasted with us, the boldest 
 of them jumping up on the far end of the 
 table, beyond the limits of the cloth, and eat- 
 ing a ])it of cutlet with a truly dainty and 
 catlike grace ; and while our UK'al went for- 
 ward a (l(?lightful old woman in a white cap 
 and a l)lue gown macU; a pretext of i)icking 
 up sticks n(.-ar b)- that she might gaze at us 
 with a stealthy wonder. It all seemed like a 
 bit out of a picture; and when Monsieur
 
 14 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Bargeton, thoroughly awake and abounding 
 in fricndhncss, came flourishing out to us with 
 the coffee, we assured him that never had a 
 breakfast been more to our minds. 
 
 Not until four o'clock — after an honest 
 reckoning of eight francs and fifty cen-times 
 for our own and the Ponette's entertain- 
 ment — did we get away; and evening was 
 close upon us as we drove slowly up the hill 
 whereon is the very high-bred and lovable 
 little city of Uzes. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We had hoped that three days of absolute 
 rest in Uzes would have put a trifle of spirit 
 into the Ponette ; but this hope was not re- 
 alized. She came forth from her pleasant 
 pastime of eating her head off in Monsieur 
 Bechard's stables in precisely the same dull, 
 phlegmatic condition that she went in. It 
 was impossible to force her to a faster gait 
 than a slow jog-trot. Left to herself — in ac- 
 cordance with her owner's fond suggestion — 
 she instantly fell into a lumbering walk. P)Ut 
 her loitering disposition was so well in accord
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 15 
 
 with our own lluu \vc fountl little fault in her 
 monuniLMital slowness. There could be no 
 i^Teater happiness, we thouL;ht, than thus to 
 Lio idlinLT alouL!' throusjh that lo\el\- countr\' in 
 that briLrht weather while our hearts were as 
 Ynji^ht within us as the summer tla\s were Icmil;'. 
 
 The highway leading" eastward h'om Uzes 
 served our purposes iar too directly for us 
 to follow it. A minor road — LToinir around 
 by the northeast to another road, whicli ran 
 south to a third road, which, doubling- on our 
 course, ran west aL>"ain — afforded a circuitous 
 line of approach to the Pont du Gard that 
 was much more to our likin;^'. Naturally, 
 after havin*^ careful!)- looked out this route 
 upon the map, and after having- decided con- 
 siderately to follow it, we abandoned it for 
 something that we l)elieved to be better 
 before we had gone half a dozen miles. 
 
 Near the hamlet of Manx we beir^n the 
 ascent of low niountains : a very desolate 
 region of slate-grey rock, with here and there 
 patches of scrub-oak {cJicne-verf) growing in 
 a meagre soil. Beyond Flaux, off to the 
 right among the oak-bushes, went a most 
 tempting road. According to the ma|) it 
 was a c he III in d'cxploilalioii. J'recisely what
 
 i6 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 meaning attached to this term I did not know 
 (I found out a htde later) ; but the road pos- 
 sessed the obvious merit of leading directly 
 across the mountain to the village of Vers, 
 and thence the highway went onward to the 
 Pont du Gard. Setting aside as irrelevant 
 the fact that we had come out of our way for 
 the express purpose of prolonging our jour- 
 ney, we decided to commit ourselves to this 
 doubtful pathway for the good reason that it 
 was a short cut. 
 
 We had gone but a little way along it 
 when we met a carter (a treacherous person, 
 whose apparent kindliness cloaked a malevo- 
 lent soul) whose deliberate statement that 
 the road was passable set us entirely at our 
 ease. He himself had but just come from 
 Vers, he said ; and he gave us careful direc- 
 tions that we might not miss the way : We 
 were to ascend the mountain, and to continue 
 across the little plain that there was on top 
 of it, until we came to a tall stone post at a 
 fork in the road. This was a sign-post, but 
 in the course of years the inscription upon it 
 had weathered away. At this post we were 
 to take the turn to the right — and then we 
 would be in Vers in a twinkling.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE \^ 
 
 After we left this betraying-beacon of a 
 carter the road r;ipicll\ o^rew rougher, and 
 the sjrowth of scrub-oak on each side of it 
 became so thick as to be ahuost impene- 
 trable. The four or five bare httle stone 
 houses of I'laux were the hist which we saw 
 in a stretch of more than six miles. It was a 
 most dismal solitude, having about it that air 
 of brooding and portentous melancholy which 
 I have found always in rugged regions desert 
 even of little animals and birds. 
 
 We came slowly to the plain upon the 
 mountain top, and to the sign-post whereon 
 there was no sis^n ; and there we took, as the 
 perfidious carter had directed, the turning to 
 the right. The road ran smoothly enough 
 across the plain, but the moment that it 
 tipped down-liill it became \ery bad indeed. 
 Before we had descended a dozen rods it was 
 no more than the dry bed of a mountain 
 stream, cumbered witli boulders and broken 
 b\- rocky ledges of a foot high, down which 
 the carriage went with a series of appalling 
 bumps. To turn about was impossible. On 
 each side of the stream — 1 prefer to speak of 
 it as a stream — the scrub-oak grew in a 
 thick tauLile into which the I'oneLte C(»uld
 
 i8 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 not have thrust so much as her snubby nose. 
 So narrow was the watercourse that the oak- 
 bushes on each side brushed against our 
 wheels. We were in for it, and whether we 
 wanted to or not our only course was to keep 
 on bumping down the hill. In my haste, I 
 then and there cursed that carter bitterly ; 
 and I may add that in my subsequent leisure 
 my curse has not been recalled. That he 
 counted upon finding our wreck and estab- 
 lishing a claim for salvage I am confident. 
 He may even have been following us stealth- 
 ily, waiting for the catastrophe to occur. It 
 is a great satisfaction to me that his perni- 
 cious project was foiled. By a series of mira- 
 cles we pulled through entire ; on the lower 
 reaches of the mountain the stream became 
 a road again ; and as we swung clear from 
 the bushes — getting at last safe sea-room off 
 that desperate lee-shore — we saw the houses 
 of Vers before us, not a mile away. 
 
 IV 
 
 Vers is a very small town, certainly not 
 more than a hundred yards across, but in the
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 19 
 
 course of our attempt to traverse Its tangle 
 of streets — all so narrow that our carriage 
 took up almost the entire space between the 
 houses, and all leading down-hill — we suc- 
 ceeded in getting hopelessly lost. We de- 
 scended upon the town at about five in 
 the afternoon ; at which peaceful hour the 
 women-folk were seated before their open 
 doors, in the shade of the high houses, mak- 
 ing a show of knitting while they kept up 
 a steady buzz of talk. Many of them had 
 helpless babes upon their laps, and innocent 
 little children were playing about their knees. 
 Our passage through the town even at a 
 walk would have occasioned a considerable 
 disturbance of its inhabitants. Actually, we 
 spread consternation among them by dash- 
 ing through the narrow streets almost at a 
 run. This extraordinary burst of speed on 
 the part of the Ponette — the only sign of 
 sjjirit that she manifested during our whole 
 journe)- — was due to extraneous causes. 
 Just as we entered the town a swarm o^ 
 vicious flies settle<l upon her sensitive under- 
 parts, biting her so savagely that they drove 
 her quite wild with jjain. bOr a moment she 
 stopjjed, while she made ineffectual kicks at
 
 20 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 her own stomach ; then she darted forward, 
 and all my strength was required to keep her 
 off a run. The women and children shrieked 
 and fled from our path ; bolting into their 
 houses and, most fortunately for all of us, 
 taking their chairs in with them and so leav- 
 ing us a clear course. At the little grande 
 place I took what looked like the right turn, 
 but it really was a doubling upon our 
 course — and in a minute more we were 
 charging down the very same street again, 
 scattering the crowds assembled to talk 
 about the cyclone and to gaze in the direc- 
 tion in which it had gone. As these peo- 
 ple had their backs turned toward us, it was 
 only by a miracle that they escaped alive. 
 This time I took another turn from the 
 grande place — grazing a young woman car- 
 rying a baby as I rounded the corner ; skil- 
 fully swinging the Ponette away from an 
 open door that she seemed bent upon enter- 
 ing ; and then forward among a fresh lot of 
 women knittino- and talkinor at their ease. 
 The Ponette seemed to be quite crazed. 
 Twice I succeeded in almost stopping her, 
 while I tried to ask my way out of that little 
 devil of a town ; and each time, in the midst
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 21 
 
 of the answer, she made vain kicks at her 
 hickless stomach, and then dashed forward 
 like a simoom. Had I been drivinor a nif^ht- 
 mare the situation coidd not have been 
 worse. 
 
 A brave old man rescued us. While I 
 held in the Ponette hard, he seized her 
 bridle ; and when lie had calmed her by 
 brushint^ away the tormenting flies, and I 
 had explained that we were lost and had 
 beijired him to ijuide us to the hitrhway, he 
 smiled gently and in a moment had led us 
 out from that entan'-linLr maze. The dis- 
 tance to the highwa)' proved to be less than 
 two score yards — but then he knew what 
 turns to take in that most marvelously 
 crooked town ! 
 
 In my gratitude I offered the old man 
 money. He refused to accept it: "I cannot 
 take monsieur's silver," he said politely. 
 "Already I am more llian paid. In all the 
 seventy )ears of ni)- life here in Vers, mon- 
 sieur is the very first who has been lost in my 
 little town. It is most interestinir. It is 
 (Mioiigh ! " 
 
 In this jxjsition he was lirni. 1 tlianketl 
 him again, warinl), and we dro\e away.
 
 22 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 When we had gone a short distance, I looked 
 back. He was standing in the middle of the 
 road eazine after us. His face was wreathed 
 in smiles. 
 
 In o-oine from Vers to the Pont du Gard, 
 and thence to Remoulins, we were compelled 
 to travel by the great highways ; but in go- 
 in ^ from Remoulins to Avis^non we fell once 
 more into roundabout courses: taking a route 
 iiationale north to the village of Valliguieres, 
 that thence we might go east by a cross- 
 country road which traversed a forest, ac- 
 cording to the map, and therefore promised 
 protection from the blazing rays of the Au- 
 gust sun. On the map, this Foret de Tavel 
 made a fine showing. On the face of nature, 
 the showing that it made was less impressive. 
 In fact, when we reached it we found that we 
 had come a full half-century too soon. For 
 four or five miles we drove across rocky hills 
 more or less covered with oak-bushes, which 
 in time, no doubt, will become trees. But of 
 trees actually grown, we saw in this distance
 
 AN EMliASSV TO I'ROVLNCK 23 
 
 precisel)' six. Unfortunately they were scat- 
 tered at intervals of half a mile or more apart. 
 They would have been more impressive, 
 would better have realized our crud(i Ameri- 
 can conception of a forest, had tliey been in 
 a L^roup. 
 
 It was because of our detour in search of 
 the shade of trees which had only a carto- 
 i^raphical existence that our cominij^ to the 
 hills borderincr the Rhone westward w^as de- 
 layed until late in the afternoon ; and the 
 Ponette walked up the Ion or ascent so slowly, 
 and so frequently halted — with a persuasive 
 look o\er her shoulder that could not be re- 
 fused — that when at last we reached tlie 
 crest the sun was hau'dns/ low on the hori- 
 zon above the summits of the Cevennes. 
 
 On the hilltop, with a si^-h of tliankfulness, 
 the Ponette stopped ; and for a while we did 
 not urge her to i^o forward. Below us, in 
 purple twilii^ht, lay the Rhone valley : here 
 widely extend(!d by its junction willi llie val- 
 !(;)■ of th(; Durance. On its farther side were 
 the foot-hills of the Alps, with Mont Ventour 
 standiuLT boldk- forward and risint/ hitrh into 
 th(; radiant ui)per rc;<»"ions of the air. Near 
 at hand, down in the pur])le shadows, close
 
 24 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 beside the river, was a dark mass of houses 
 and churches, sharply defined by surrounding 
 ramparts : from the midst of which a huge 
 building towered to so great a height that 
 all its upper portion was bathed in sunshine, 
 while its upper windows, reflecting the nearly 
 level sunbeams, blazed as with fire. And we 
 knew that we were looking upon Avignon 
 and the Palace of the Popes ; and our hearts 
 were filled with a frreat thankfulness — be- 
 cause in that moment was realized one of the 
 deep longings of our lives. 
 
 The Ponette, with the carriage pushing 
 behind her, went down the zigzag road, Les 
 Angles, at an astonishing trot ; but pulled up 
 to her normal gentle pace on the level be- 
 fore we reached the bridge, and crossed that 
 structure — over which a sarcastic sign for- 
 bade her to gallop — at an easy crawl. We 
 did not try to hasten her pondering footsteps, 
 being well content to approach slowly this 
 city of our love : seeing below us the Rhone 
 tossing like a little sea ; on each side of us, 
 in the central portion of the passage, the 
 green darkness of the Isle Barthelasse ; off to 
 the left the survivincj- frao-ment of the bridge 
 built seven hundred years ago by St. Benezet
 
 AN EMBASSY TO I'KOVEN'CE 25 
 
 of blessed memor\' ; in front of ns the his^h 
 houses of the city risino- above their encir- 
 chno- wall. Slowly we went onward, and in 
 the dusk of early evenino- we entered Avig- 
 non b) the Porte de I'Oulle. 
 
 VI 
 
 We had intended oroinir to a modest, low- 
 priced hotel — "un peu a lecart, mais recom- 
 mande." as the ^^uide-book put it — in the 
 central portion of the town. The civic guard 
 who halted us at the gate — to request our 
 assurance that our light luggage contained 
 uolhing upon whicli the octroi had a 
 claim — crave us with the Lfood will of a true 
 Provencal the most precise directions as to 
 how this hotel was to be reached. Having 
 thus dir(^cted us. he saitl frankly that we 
 pr()l)ably would get lost on th(; way thither; 
 bill a<l«lc(l that an)'body whom we met would 
 be glad to set us on our course anew. This 
 warning, and a single glance into the laby- 
 rinth before us, determined me against the 
 adventure. After our experience in Vers —
 
 26 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 and Avignon was to Vers as a haystack to a 
 wisp of hay — I had no fancy again to try 
 conchisions with a maze ; and I was the 
 more easily seduced from this dangerous en- 
 deavor by finding, not a dozen rods within the 
 city walls, the friendly open gateway of an inn. 
 
 It was the Hotel de I'Europe, the most 
 magnificent establishment in Avignon ; the 
 hotel to which, above all others, we had de- 
 cided that we would not go. Without a 
 moment's hesitation I drove the hopelessly 
 vulgar Ponette and our shabby carriage 
 through the arched gateway and across the 
 courtyard to the main entrance. The gerant 
 received us coldly ; the waiters, in evening 
 dress, regarded us with an open disdain. 
 Even the stable-boy, called to lead the Po- 
 nette to her quarters, manifested a sense of 
 the indignity put upon the establishment by 
 interrupting my orders as to oats with a curt, 
 " But yes, m'sieu' ; I know, I know," and 
 cToine off with his nose rancjed well in air. 
 
 It came upon us with a shock, this show 
 of scorn. In the little towns where we had 
 halted during the week that our journey had 
 lasted we everywhere had been well re- 
 ceived. At Tavel, where we had break-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO I'ROX'ENCE 27 
 
 fasted that \cr)- clay ('t was a \illagc that 
 I had hesitated about entering- in such poor 
 array because of the sign at its outer hmits : 
 "A Tax el hi niendicite est interdite") our 
 host had vokniteered the handsome state- 
 ment that the Ponette was a brave beast 
 with legs of iron ; and he had spoken in 
 tones of conviction wliicli left no room for 
 doubtinof that his admiration for her was sin- 
 cere. But at Tavel, and through the whole 
 of that happ)' week, we had been among the 
 simple children of nature ; in coming to the 
 Motel de I'Europe, as we now sharply real- 
 ized, we once more were in touch with that 
 highly conventionalized phase of civilization 
 known arbitraril) as Society, and were 
 subject to its artificial laws. 
 
 As we were led to our gilded autl red- 
 velveted apartment — with a man in waiting 
 to brush the Ambassador's rust\' coat, and a 
 maid to bring hot water for the Ambassa- 
 dress — I could not but feel a shuddering 
 dread that my mission iniglu prove a failure 
 after all ! What if the Provencal poets should 
 resent — (nen as the o^craut and the waiters 
 so obviousl)- resented — the lowly state in 
 which the American Embassy had come ?
 
 PART SECOND 
 
 HAMXG been swayed by considerations 
 parti \- diplomatic and partly personal, 
 the Embassy had gone from America to Pro- 
 vence b\- a route which gave it no opportu- 
 nit\-, so to speak, for changing cars. Diplo- 
 maticalh". the liope was entertained that by 
 thus ignoring all other nations and principali- 
 ties a more favorable impression would be 
 made upon the high poetic Power to which it 
 was accredited, l^ersonally, the danger was 
 recognized that if the Kmbass)- — being by 
 naturt' errant — wc-re given large opportuni- 
 ties to stra\-. years might elapse before it 
 arri\((l at its destination ; to say nothing of 
 the possibilit)- that it might never get there 
 at all. 
 
 Under constraint of these convictions our 
 course had been shaped. ( )n a gre)- morn- 
 
 29
 
 30 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 ing in April we had taken ship at New York, 
 and had gHded out through the grey mists 
 which enveloped the harbor into the grey 
 waste of the Atlantic. Grey weather clung 
 to us. Mist overhung the land when at last 
 we sighted it, and Cape St. Vince-nt and 
 Cape Trafalgar loomed large through a cold 
 haze ; when we passed the Rock, the base 
 whereof was hidden in a mass of cloud, that 
 considerable excrescence upon the face of 
 nature seemed to have started adrift in the 
 upper regions of the air ; mist clung about 
 the lower levels of the east coast of Spain, 
 hiding the foundations of the snow-capped 
 mountains and leaving only their gleaming 
 crests defined against the cold sky ; even the 
 Gulf of Lyons was chill and grey. And at 
 the end of all this, in a flood of May sun- 
 shine, Marseilles — in its glow and glory of 
 warm color — burst upon us like a rainbow- 
 bomb. 
 
 From Marseilles to Avignon, by the rapidc, 
 the journey is made in precisely two hours. 
 The time consumed by the Embassy, how- 
 ever, in its passage between these points was 
 three months and four days. I mention this 
 fact in order to exhibit in a favorable light
 
 AX EMBASSY TO l'RO\'ENCE 31 
 
 our wisdom in choosiiii^^ a direct route across 
 the Atlantic. Had \vc made our landing 
 at any i)ort on the northern coast of Eu- 
 rope, with the consequent beguiling" oppor- 
 tunities for lateral travel which then would 
 have opened to us, I am confident that 
 e\en ntnv we would l)e working our way 
 southward amidst enticin*'" winds and lurinof 
 currents toward our still far distant eoal. 
 It was only our firmness in resisting at the 
 very outset all these attractive possibilities 
 that in the end brought us to Avignon in 
 what, I think, was a reasonably short space 
 of time. 
 
 Aside, however, fi-oin the predilection of 
 the Embass)' tor devious rather than direct 
 wa)s, there were large considerations of pol- 
 icy which made advisable a slow advance 
 from Marseilles northward. Vor the ade- 
 rpiate discharge of our mission, it was ver\' 
 necessar)', before presenting our credentials 
 and opening official relations with tlu; poets 
 of I'rovence, that we should enlarijfe our 
 knowledge of themselves, their literature, 
 and their land. In li'nlh, our hmd ol igno- 
 rance touching all these matters \astl)' 
 cxccedeil our luntl oi inlormation — a lack
 
 32 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 of equipment for which I should be disposed 
 to apologize were it not so entirely in keep- 
 in a- with all the traditions of American 
 diplomacy. 
 
 Our whole store of knowledge was no 
 more than a mere pinch of fundamental facts : 
 that about the end of the third decade of the 
 present century a poet named Joseph Rou- 
 manille had revived Provencal as a literary 
 language ; that to this prophet had come, as 
 a disciple, Frederic Mistral, who presently 
 developed into a conquering and convincing 
 apostle of the new poetic faith ; that to these 
 two had been gathered five other poets ; that 
 the seven, all dwelling in or near Avignon, 
 had united — about the middle of the cen- 
 tury — in founding a brotherhood of Proven- 
 9al poets to which they gave the name of 
 the Felibrige ; that, in the course of years, 
 this brotherhood had come to be a great so- 
 ciety with branches, or affiliated organiza- 
 tions, in various parts of France and even in 
 Spain. But of the poetry which these poets 
 had written we knew nothing at first hand. 
 We had not seen, even, either of the English 
 versions of Mistral's "Mireio" — the one by 
 Miss Harriet W. Preston, the other by Mr.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 33 
 
 Charles Grant. In sliort the attitude of the 
 Embassy toward Provengal Hterature was as 
 handsomely unprejudiced as could be induced 
 by a liberally extensive ignorance of essential 
 facts. 
 
 II 
 
 Ox the other hand, the Embassy did pos- 
 sess a considerable store of knowledge in 
 regard to the group of Avignon poets per- 
 sonally ; and all of it tended to induce a 
 prejudice of a most kindly sort. 
 
 Eleven years before our mission was de- 
 spatched, the American troubadour whom we 
 represented had made a poet's pilgrimage to 
 Avignon, and had been taken ('t is a way 
 they have in Avignon) promptly to his brother 
 poets' hc'arts. How unexpected and how de- 
 lightful had been his experience best may be 
 exhibited by a citation from the record made 
 at the time by the historian to the; expedi- 
 tion — who thus wrote, under date of the 8th 
 and lothofApril, 1S79: 
 
 "We have made a great disco\er) — a 
 ' nest ' of Provencal poets, all living and writ- 
 3
 
 34 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 ing here at Avignon. Our own poet spent 
 the morning with them yesterday, and came 
 home bringing an armful of their books; from 
 
 which, last evening, H read us some of 
 
 the translations, which are very charming. 
 One of the poets is Mr. Bonaparte-Wyse, an 
 Irishman and a cousin of Napoleon III. He 
 makes this his home for a part of the year, 
 and writes the poetry of Provence. . . . 
 
 "We had a most interesting day yester- 
 day. The little company of poets (' felibres ') 
 have united in doing honor to our poet and 
 
 H . They came, brought by Mr. Wyse, 
 
 their interpreter, to invite us to a ' felibri- 
 jado' — a meeting, a dinner, speeches, poems, 
 songs, everything delightful. We had been 
 to Vaucluse for the afternoon — on our way 
 home passing Mont Ventour with its snowy 
 peaks, and the hills with their olive-trees and 
 cypress dark against a pale golden sky. It 
 was evening when we reached the hotel and 
 found them all waiting for us in the little 
 square dining-room. 
 
 " Mr. Wyse presided at dinner, with 
 
 H and the Boy beside him :' H 
 
 wearing a bunch of starry blue periwinkle.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 35 
 
 the flower of Provence, in her hair. Oppo- 
 site to them sat M. Roumanille (founder of 
 the School), with our poet beside him ; and 
 for my neighbor I had M. Mathieu, the old- 
 est of the poets. Two young men were on 
 the other side : M. Gras and another whose 
 name I do not recall. Each one has a de- 
 vice and a name b)- which he is known 
 among the ' felibres ' — one a 'cricket,' an- 
 other a ' butterfly.' 
 
 "After dinner a cup of Chateau-neuf was 
 passed, and every one in turn made a speech 
 and gave a toast. We were loaded to em- 
 barrassment with compliments, and our own 
 modest little speeches — through Mr. Wyse's 
 interpretation — were transformed into flow- 
 ers of sentiment. The Boy, to his delight, 
 saw very near hiiu a dish of his favorite 
 sponge-cakes — of which he sometimes had 
 been allowed two as a special favor and 
 treat, and to which Ik; had given the name 
 of '1)iffies.' Kind old M. Mathieu helped 
 
 him to these without limit — as H and I, 
 
 hapixming to look at the dish, and seeing its 
 great diminishment, suddenly perceived to 
 our consternation.
 
 36 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 '" The dinner over, they led us up a dark 
 old stairway into a long hall, dimly lighted, 
 at one end of which a little candle-lit table 
 was laid with coffee and delicious crystal-like 
 cordials. The hall had been, years ago, a 
 meeting-place of the Knights Templar ; and 
 there were still sitjns remaining- of a little 
 chapel there, set apart. Indeed, it all was 
 like a little bit of the middle aoes. After 
 we had had our coffee, they gave us their 
 songs and poems : one of the younger men 
 stood up while he sang a sort of troubadour 
 march to battle, his voice ringing through 
 the great dim hall. M. Roumanille recited 
 some Christmas verses, full of fine solemn 
 tones ; M. Mathieu, a little poem with the 
 refrain Catoim ! Catotui ! — keeping time with 
 his own airy gestures and waves of the hand 
 as graceful as the lines. Mr. Wyse gave us 
 some translations of Walt Whitman into Pro- 
 vengal verse. Madame Roumanille, too, re- 
 peated a poem for us — and our own Poet 
 brouorht some verses which he had written at 
 
 Vaucluse that afternoon and which H 
 
 read in their French translation. They gave 
 us some choruses. Many of their voices 
 were rich and musical. Then H re-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 37 
 
 pcated for them those Hues of Keats, begin- 
 niiiLT : 
 
 O for a draught of vintage, that hath been 
 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 
 
 Tasting of Flora and the country-green, 
 
 Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth ! 
 
 and although they could not understand the 
 words they felt their wonderful melody. 
 
 "It was very late when we w^ent home 
 through the quiet streets, escorted by two or 
 three of our entertainers — one of them car- 
 rying the Boy. He had been safely tucked 
 away in a l^cd at the hotel after dinner, and 
 did not wake except — liis head on his own 
 little pillow — to say once (still dreaming of 
 poets and sponge-cakes), * 'Nuff biffies ! ' " 
 
 Upon our troubadour's store of delightful 
 memories (only a part of which are referred 
 to in the foregoing citation of history) we 
 had drawn so often and so freely that these 
 Provengal poets had come to be to us — while 
 as yet our ver)- existence was unknown to 
 them — our own familiar friends. Time and 
 again we had fancied ourselves knocking at 
 one or another of their doors in Avignon; 
 and thereafter, as we entered, receiving the 
 3*
 
 38 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 welcome which we knew would be given us 
 so warmly because of our coming as the 
 vicars of one whom they knew and loved. 
 
 And yet, being landed at Marseilles, close 
 to these friendly doors which we were sure 
 would be standinor wide for us the moment 
 that our status as ambassadors was known, 
 we deliberately chose to make our approach 
 to Avignon by methods so slow and by 
 courses so roundabout that we spent more 
 than three months upon a journey that could 
 have been made in less than three hours. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Our tarrying, as I have said, was the out- 
 come of our intuitive perception of the re- 
 quirements of diplomacy. Those whom we 
 so longed to know were not mere ordinary 
 men: they were poets. For us to cast our- 
 selves upon them ignorant of their poetry 
 would be a grave discourtesy ; almost an 
 affront. Common politeness, no less than 
 our own interest, commanded that we should 
 seek in their writings for that understanding
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 39 
 
 of their tone of thouoht, their purposes, their 
 aspirations, which would enable us to meet 
 them upon a common ^"rounci. And we real- 
 ized that hand in hand with this study of 
 their literature should go a study of their 
 fellow-countr\men and of the land in which 
 they lived, hor which several reasons we 
 perceived that the case of the Embassy was 
 one that required slowness in order to assure 
 speed. 
 
 At Marseilles, in the very first book-shop 
 that we entered, the very first book that we 
 bought was Roumanille's "Oubreto en Vers." 
 It was to Roumanille, the Capoulie, the 
 head, of the Felibres, that the Embassy 
 specifically was accredited. Therefore was it 
 fitting that our first purchase should be the 
 volume in which his first poems are in- 
 cluded — the sparks of pure fire which kin- 
 dled anew the flamt: of Provencal literature 
 in modern times. 
 
 rhf,' poems were in Provencal only. There 
 was no I*"r(MK:h translation. h^)rtunatcl\- llu" 
 Ambassadress — possessing an e(iuij)ment of 
 Spanish, Italian, and PVench, together with a 
 certain skill in Latin — found the conquest of 
 this language easy ; and the Ambassador
 
 40 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 profited by her gift of tongues to become 
 acquainted with the spirit of Roumanille's 
 verse. It was a most genuine poetry, and 
 popular in the better sense of that injured 
 word. With few exceptions, the themes 
 were of a sort which country-side folic readily 
 would comprehend ; commonplace subjects 
 made relishing, and at the same time shifted 
 wholly away from the commonplace, by deli- 
 cate turns of poetic sentiment or an infusion 
 of genial humor or a sharp thrust of homely 
 wit. Very many of the poems were homi- 
 lies ; but so gaily or so tenderly disguised 
 that each went fairly to its mark without 
 arousing any of that just resentment which 
 is apt to annul the benefits supposed to be 
 conferred by homilies of the usual sort. It 
 was easy to see in these poems how and why 
 Roumanille had laid hold upon the hearts of 
 his countrymen. We ourselves, though los- 
 ing much of their rich flavor of local allusion, 
 yielded instantly to the blending of grace, 
 freshness, humor, manliness, naivete, which 
 gave them so peculiarly original a charm. 
 
 In the same book-shop we found another 
 volume of poems which greatly stirred us : 
 " Lou Roumancero Prouven9au " of Felix
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 41 
 
 Gras. In our then ignorance, we barely 
 knew this poet's name. But we had read 
 no farther than " Lou Papo d'Avignoun " 
 and "Lou baroun de Magalouno " when our 
 minds were made up that here was a singer 
 of ballads whose tongue was tipped with fire. 
 They whirled upon us, these ballads, and 
 conquered our admiration at a blow. We 
 knew by instinct — what time and greater 
 knowledge have shown to be the truth — that 
 of all the Provencal poets whom we soon 
 were to encounter none would set our heart- 
 strings more keenly a-thrilling than did this 
 fiery ballad-maker, Monsieur Gras. 
 
 It was in another book-shop, the friendly 
 establishment of Monsieur Boys — a shop 
 pervaded by that delightful smell of musti- 
 ness which, being peculiar to old Ijooks, sets 
 every bookman's soul on the alert for the 
 finding of treasures — that we came upon 
 Mr. Grant's unrlnmcd Kn<jflish version of 
 " Mireio"; and so were able (ha\ing already 
 bought the edition in which is the author's 
 parallel translation into I'"rcn(li) to essa\ the; 
 reading of Mistral's first poem with the dou- 
 bl(' advantage of his own I'rench version 
 and of this literal i^nglish key.
 
 42 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 English and Provengal, be it remarked, are 
 more closely allied in genius than are Pro- 
 vengal and French. They have in common 
 an honest directness, a sonorous melody, a 
 positive strength ; and even many almost 
 identical words — for which reasons Proven- 
 gal may be resolved into English with a close 
 approach to literal exactness, and with little 
 loss of the essence of the original phrase. 
 Mr. Grant's translation of " Mireio," it must 
 be confessed, is not a brilliant illustration of 
 these facts ; but in Miss Preston's rhymed 
 English version of the poem (at that time 
 unknown to us) many felicitous passages 
 show how successfully the soul and the body 
 of the original may be transferred into Eng- 
 lish verse. 
 
 But these considerations of the verbal 
 mechanism of translation came later. When 
 we first read "Mireio" we thought only of 
 the poem itself: a perfectly simple story of 
 country life which Mistral's genius has ex- 
 alted to the plane of the heroic ; an idyl 
 which rises from height to height until it be- 
 comes a tragedy ; a strain of pure melody 
 throughout. Having read it — and after it 
 " Nerto," " La Reino Jano," " Calendau," and
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 43 
 
 the exquisite shorter poems, " Lis Isclo 
 d'Or" — we were at no loss to understand 
 why Mistral is called Master by his brethren 
 of the Felibres. 
 
 Still another very useful book did we find 
 in a Marseilles book-shop ; one, indeed, 
 which so substantially increased our store of 
 necessar)- knowledge that I desire to place 
 formall)- on record here my gratitude to its 
 author : Monsieur Paul Marieton. This 
 book, " La Terre Provengale," is a veritable 
 treasury of infomiation concerning the Fe- 
 libres and all their works and ways; a blend- 
 ing of kindly personal gossip — so frank and 
 so confidential that those about whom the 
 author writes seem fairly to rise up in the 
 flesh before the reader's eyes — with a mass 
 of accurate statement in regard to what these 
 celebrities in the world of letters have ac- 
 complished, and about the beautiful land in 
 which they live. 
 
 I did not venture to hope, while I was 
 reading this book with so much satisfaction 
 and also with so much profit, that in the full- 
 ness of a fortunate time its genially erudite 
 author would become m\' Iricnd ; aiul I cer- 
 tainly did not imagine (though this also has
 
 44 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 come to pass) that my life would be made a 
 torment to me by receiving from Monsieur 
 Marieton letters in a handwriting so bewil- 
 deringly chaotic that to read them requires 
 in every instance a special inspiration from 
 
 on high ! 
 
 And so, through the weeks and the 
 months which followed our landing at Mar- 
 seilles, we added constantly to our stock of 
 books and to our store of literary knowledge ; 
 while from various points of vantage — Mont- 
 pelier, Aries, Aiguesmortes, Tarascon, Beau- 
 caire, Nimes — we sofdy spied upon the land. 
 Through all this time we found growing 
 within us a stronger and yet stronger love 
 for a people and a literature whereof the 
 common characteristics are graciousness, and 
 manliness, and absolute sincerity, and warmth 
 of heart. And all was so satisfying and so 
 entrancing that the three months and four 
 days during which we were upon our journey 
 from Marseilles to Avignon seemed to us no 
 more than a single bright spring morning: 
 wherefore, as we sank to rest that night 
 amidst the excessive gilding and red velvet 
 of the Hotel de I'Europe, we counted the 
 evening of our coming to Avignon — as it
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 45 
 
 truly might have been had we gone direct 
 from our ship to the train — but the evening 
 of our first day in France. 
 
 IV 
 
 Our hearts were beating many more than 
 the normal number of beats to the minute 
 when we set forth to deliver to the Capoulie 
 of the Felibres the credentials of our Vai\- 
 bassy. 
 
 These credentials — therein following prim- 
 itive Mexican customs — were wholly pictorial. 
 They consisted simply of four })hotographs : 
 of the American troubadour whom we rep- 
 resented ; of his dame ; of their children ; 
 of their great dog. My instructions were to 
 present these empowering documents to 
 Roumanille, in liis official capacity as Ca- 
 poulie of the belibres, and to tell him that 
 with them came the love of those to whom 
 love had been given by the poets of Pro- 
 vence eleven years before. And I was to add 
 that in America slill were cherished warm 
 and grateful memories of those glad evenings
 
 46 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 in the old house (the abiding-place of the 
 Templars in Queen Jano's time) where the 
 poet Anselme Mathieu in most unbusiness- 
 like fashion carried on the business of inn- 
 keeping : when the corks flew out in mellow 
 cannonading from old bottles of precious 
 Chateau-neuf du Pape, wine consecrate to 
 the felibrien festivals ; when all the poets 
 wrote poems to their brother from afar ; 
 when the ancient vaulted hall of the Tem- 
 plars rang with the echoes of iambic laugh- 
 ter, and with the choruses of Provencal songs. 
 Knowinor that Enorlish was a sealed Ian- 
 guage to Roumanille, I ventured to add to 
 my pictorial credentials some written words 
 which had the appearance of being English 
 verse. The sentiments embodied in these 
 supposititious verses would stand translation 
 into French prose creditably ; and I had the 
 more confidence in their kindly reception 
 because the Ambassadress had encompassed 
 them with a decorative border of olive- 
 branches, amidst which were blazoned the 
 arms of Avignon and of our own country 
 together with the emblem of the Felibres, a 
 cigale. This illusive manuscript being in- 
 closed in the ofiticial-looking envelop which
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 47 
 
 contained the empowering photographs, the 
 Embassy moved out in good order from its 
 too-magnificent quarters, and with a becom- 
 ing dignity advanced upon Roumanille's 
 book-shop in tlie Rue St. Agricol. 
 
 From the Hotel de I'Europe to the Rue 
 St. Agricol is a walk of but five minutes. 
 As we rounded the corner from the Rue 
 Joseph \'ernet, we saw our Mecca before 
 us — plainl)- marked by a sign on which was 
 the legend in tall yellow letters: " Rouma- 
 nille. Librairie Proven^ale." Here, together, 
 Roumanille had both his shop and his home. 
 Directly across the street was the church of 
 St. Agricol, wherein, in reverent faith, this 
 good old man worshiped through so many 
 years. 
 
 The door of the shop stood open. We en- 
 tered into a bookman's paradise. The room, 
 large and lofty, was packed with books from 
 floor to ceiling; books were spread out upon 
 tables ; books were on nearly every chair ; 
 boxes of books and piles of books encum- 
 bered the floor. In the midst of this 1 )i] )]!()- 
 graphic jungle, at a desk everywhere littered 
 with books and papers, sat Rouinauillc him- 
 self: a sturdy, thick-set man ol medium
 
 48 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 height; gray hair; beard and mustache 
 chpped short and grizzled almost to white ; 
 fresh complexion ; kindly light-brown eyes 
 twinkling humorously under bushy gray 
 brov/s ; a racy and at the same time a very 
 sweet and winning smile. 
 
 He rose slowly, and in accepting the pack- 
 age, and in listening to the message that ac- 
 companied it (which message the Ambassador 
 prudently delivered through the medium of 
 the Ambassadress), he manifested so marked 
 a hesitation as to strengthen our already 
 aroused fears that the Embassy might be re- 
 jected by the power to which it came. Later, 
 when cordial relations were fully established, 
 he explained matters. What with the ap- 
 pearance of the Ambassador (who by some 
 twist of atavism has reverted to the type of 
 his ancestors of three hundred years ago, 
 dwellers in almost this very part of France), 
 and the fluent French of the Ambassadress, 
 his mind was all at sea. There seemed to be 
 no reasonable connection between the mes- 
 sengers, who apparently were his own coun- 
 try-folk, and the message that they brought 
 from friends who certainly belonged in a dis- 
 tant part of the world. Not until the mes-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 49 
 
 sage had been repeated and explained a little, 
 and the opening of the package had discov- 
 ered the well-known faces, was the whole 
 matter clear to him. And then what a wel- 
 come we received ! 
 
 Madame Roumanille was summoned, and 
 their dauorhters Mademoiselle Therese and 
 Mademoiselle Jeanne, to take part in wel- 
 coming the representatives of the friends who 
 had come and gone eleven years before — 
 but who were remembered as freshly and 
 warmly as though their visit had been upon 
 the previous day. 
 
 From the shop we were led through the 
 dinin</-room to the salon — a larfre room at 
 the back of the house, facing south and 
 flooded with sunshine, which trained individu- 
 ality from delightful old-fashioned furniture, 
 interesting pictures and curious antique bric- 
 a-brac, and a Proven9al tambourine and pipe 
 hung upon the wall. Instantly our jjhoto- 
 graphic credentials were ranged along the 
 front nf ihc pianoforte, and the whole fam- 
 ily burst forth into eager exclamations ami 
 questionings. 
 
 "It is Monsi(nu- and Madame to the very 
 life! Just as they were eleven years ago!" 
 4
 
 50 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 "And the children — how lovely they are! 
 There was only one then. Can it be that it 
 was this one — this tall boy? Impossible! 
 He was but a baby. We gave him cakes ! " 
 
 " And the gentle young lady who was with 
 them — so quiet and so sweet. Why is not 
 her photograph with these ? " 
 
 " Heavens ! How huge a dog ! A St. 
 Bernard — is it not so?" 
 
 "Ah, if only it were not their pictures, but 
 themselves ! " 
 
 Naturally it was the elders whose talk 
 was reminiscent and comparative. When the 
 American troubadour came with his train to 
 Avignon, Mademoiselle Therese was but a 
 slip of a girl, and Mademoiselle Jeanne was 
 but a baby of two years old. But we found 
 a pleasant proof of how well the visit had 
 been kept alive in the elders' hearts, and of 
 how much it must have been talked about, in 
 the fact that the little Jeanne was quite sure 
 that she herself remembered it all very well ! 
 
 No one can refuse to credit the people of 
 the south of France with warm hearts. But 
 it is customary with travelers of a certain 
 sort — possessors of acrid souls encased in 
 thin-blooded bodies — to seek an apology
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 51 
 
 for their own genuine coldness by aspers- 
 ingr this Q-enuine warmth with such terms as 
 "impulsiveness" and "emotional efferves- 
 cence," and by broadl)- denying that its 
 source is more than a momentary blaze. 
 Let such as these observe that we found 
 that day in Avignon still burning warmly 
 and steadily a fire of friendship lighted at 
 a chance meeting and fed only by half a 
 dozen letters in eleven years ! 
 
 Wiip:x these kindly souls in part had satis- 
 fied their eager desire for news of the Ameri- 
 can troubadour and of those beloneinir to 
 him, they diverted their interest in a hospi- 
 table fashion to his ambassadors, and with a 
 genuine heartiness pressed us with questions 
 concerning ourselves. 
 
 They were delighted when we told them 
 that we had preferred to shun Paris, and to 
 come directly from America to their own 
 beautiful cit)- of Marseilles; and more de- 
 lighted to find that ouv plan for a whole sum-
 
 52 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 mer of travel was a circuit of not much more 
 than a hundred miles in Languedoc and Pro- 
 vence. As to our method of traveling — in 
 the shabby little carriage drawn by the infi- 
 nitely lazy little mare — they set our minds at 
 rest in a moment by protesting that it was 
 nothing less than ideal. And then they lis- 
 tened with great sympathy to the narrative 
 of our small adventures by the way since our 
 departure from Nimes. When we came to 
 our entanglement in Vers, and the vast com- 
 motion with which our cyclonic passage had 
 filled that very little town, dear old Rouma- 
 nille fairly held fast to his comfortably fat 
 sides and lauohed until his cheeks were 
 a- stream with tears. It was better, he 
 vowed, than any farce ! 
 
 When we touched upon the more serious 
 side of our undertaking, our desire to study 
 the new literature that in these latter days 
 had blossomed so vigorously in Provence, 
 their interest took a correspondingly serious 
 turn ; and the pleasure that our purpose 
 gave them obviously was deep and grave. 
 
 Roumanille was gratified when we told him 
 that his " Oubreto en Vers" was the corner- 
 stone of our Provengal library ; the book that
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 53 
 
 we had bought first of all. Speaking of it 
 naturalh- brought to our minds the other vol- 
 ume that we had bought in the same shop 
 and on the same day, and in very emphatic 
 terms we expressed our admiration for " Lou 
 Roumancero Prouven^au," and for its author, 
 ■Monsieur FeHx Gras. Before our eulogy 
 was half concluded the entire family broke 
 in upon us in chorus. 
 
 '' Moji frercf' from Madame. 
 
 '" Mon bcati-frerc ! '' from Roumanille. 
 
 ''Man oiiclc!'' from the o;irls together. 
 
 Mademoiselle Jeanne sprang up and 
 brought us a photograph of this dear uncle. 
 "Ah!" she said, "you must hear him sing 
 his poems — then you will know what they 
 reall)- are ! " 
 
 This discovery that we had in France, as 
 well as in America, a common center of af- 
 fection iDrought our hearts still more closely 
 toijether ; it was almost as thoucfh we had 
 discovered — as was not impossible — a rela- 
 tionship of blood. 
 
 In truth, all this warm friendliness stirred 
 me curiously. More and more the feeling 
 was pressed in upon me that I was return- 
 ing — after a long, long absence — to my own
 
 54 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 people and my own home. A like feeling 
 surprised me when I first drifted across our 
 southwestern border and found myself among 
 the semi- Latins of Mexico; but the feeling 
 was far stronger — from the very moment of 
 my landing in Marseilles — among these my 
 kinsfolk of the Midi. Truly, I was of them. 
 The old tie of blood was revived strenuously 
 by the new tie of affection. Notwithstanding 
 the two centuries of separation, in coming 
 back to them I was coming home. 
 
 VI 
 
 In the evening of this happy day these 
 new friends of ours — who already seemed to 
 be such old friends — carried us with them 
 to the pleasure-place dear to every soul in 
 Avignon, but especially dear to the Felibres : 
 the Isle de la Barthelasse. 
 
 Through the narrow streets we walked 
 too;-ether: Roumanille bubbling over with 
 wit ; Madame abounding in kindliness ; the 
 demoiselles like merry little birds. They 
 apologized (quite as though it were a per-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 55 
 
 sonal matter) because there was no moon — 
 and we assured them that no apology was 
 necessary ; that we were more than satisfied 
 with the mellow radiance of the Provence 
 stars. 
 
 The Isle de la Barthelasse extends along- 
 nearly the whole front of Avignon in the 
 middle of the Rhone, hrom the hiirh cause- 
 way crossing- it (and so uniting- the suspen- 
 sion bridges which here span the divided 
 river) pathways descend to the low, wooded 
 island, but little above the level of the rapid 
 stream. In amono^ the trees is a restaurant; 
 antl in front of it, directly upon the river-side, 
 are ranged many little semicircular booths of 
 wattled cane — mere shelters airainst the 
 wind, which lie fairly open toward the water 
 and have no roofs but the sky. Into one of 
 these Roumanille led us — that we elders 
 might have coffee and liqueurs together, 
 while the demoiselles drank syrup and water 
 as became their fewer years. 
 
 It is the gayest and sweetest place for 
 merry-making, this Isle de la Barthelasse, 
 that ever a poet found. Our booth, and all 
 the booths about us, shone; briglu with ihc 
 light of candles giiar(K:d b)- lull, lull-shaped
 
 56 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 glass shades ; among the trees gleamed lan- 
 terns, lighting up the winding paths. At our 
 very feet was the dashing river. Half seen 
 in the starlight, across the tumbling and 
 swirling dark water that here and there was 
 touched with gleams 6f reflected light, were 
 the walls and the houses of the ancient city. 
 There was a constant undertone of sound 
 made up of the rustling of the wind in the 
 branches above us, and the gay chatter of 
 the river with its banks, and the gurgle and 
 hissing of little breaking waves; above this 
 confused murmur, there came floating to 
 us across the water strains of music from a 
 military band playing on the Promenade de 
 rOulle ; all around us was a rattle of talk 
 and a quiver of laughter ; and, as the spirit 
 moved them, one or another of our light- 
 hearted neighbors, or a whole group of them 
 together, would burst forth into song. It 
 was as though an opera had broken its bonds 
 of unreality and had become real. 
 
 In keeping with our joyous surroundings, 
 Roumanille's talk was of the festivals of the 
 Felibres ; and mainly of the great annual 
 festival whereof the patroness is the blessed 
 Sainte Estelle, whose symbol is the star of
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 57 
 
 seven ra)s. On this notable occasion the 
 four i^reat divisions of the orijanization — 
 corresponding" with the four great dialects of 
 the Langue d'Oc — are convened at one or 
 another of the towns of southern 1" ranee for 
 the celebration of floral games ; which games 
 are competitions in belles-lettres, and derive 
 their name from the fact that the prize 
 awarded to the victor is a gold or silver or 
 natural flower. They have come tripping 
 down lightly through six centuries, these 
 games, being a direct survival of trouba- 
 dour times. 
 
 At the banquet which follows the literary 
 tournament, the sentiment of amity and com- 
 radeship which is the corner-stone of the 
 organization is emphasized by the ceremony 
 of the loving-cup. Holding aloft the silver 
 vessel — the gift of the Felibres of Catalonia 
 to the Felibres of Provence — the Capoulie 
 sings the Song of the Cup, whereof tlie 
 words are by Mistral and the setting a ring- 
 ing old Provencal air, and the chorus is taken 
 uj) by all the joyous company ; after which 
 the cup is passed from lip to lip and hand to 
 hand. 
 
 With due deference to the mystic inllucnce
 
 58 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 of their star of seven rays, the FeHbres cele- 
 brate each recurruig seventh annual festival 
 with increased dignity and splendor. Then 
 great prizes are contended for ; and the win- 
 ner of the chief prize wins also the right to 
 name the Queen whose reign is to continue 
 during the ensuing seven years. The re- 
 quirements of the royal office are youth, 
 beauty, and faith in the ascendancy of the 
 Provence poets' star. It was at Mont- 
 pelier, in 1878, that the first Queen was 
 chosen : the bride of the then Capoulie, Mis- 
 tral. The second. Mademoiselle Therese 
 Roumanille, was chosen at Hyeres, in 1885. 
 We bowed to this sovereign, as Roumanille 
 spoke, in recognition of the accuracy with 
 which in her case the conditions precedent 
 to poetic royalty had been observed. 
 
 But these light-hearted poets do not limit 
 themselves in the matter of festivals to times 
 and seasons. The joy that is within them 
 may bubble up into a festival at any moment ; 
 and when their spirits thus are moved, a gay 
 company, presided over by seven ladies and 
 by seven poets, is convened — as Boccaccio 
 might have ordered it — in the pleasance of 
 some grassy and well-shaded park.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 59 
 
 " Nor is even this much of formality neces- 
 sary," said Roumanille in conclusion. " It is 
 a festival when two or three of us, or half a 
 dozen of us, are met together — as we are 
 met together now. Behold ! Madame, here, 
 is a Felibresse, and I, I am the Capoulie, the 
 head of all. As for Therese, she is our 
 Queen. W hat more would you have ? " 
 
 And so, without knowing it — there on the 
 Isle de la Barthelasse, in the midst of the 
 dashing Rhone waters, in sight of the twink- 
 ling lights of Avignon — w^e had taken part 
 in our first felibrien festival ! 
 
 • ^ Vk 'f /-■ 
 
 h\
 
 PART THIRD 
 
 NEARLY a month later, when we were 
 estabhshed in Aviijnon for a lone visit, 
 we took part in another festival — this was in 
 Roumanille's home — whereof the motive was 
 our meeting with h'elix Gras. DurinLT our 
 hurried hrst \isit of only four days, when we 
 were hurtling- across the Midi at the heels of 
 the Ponette, Madame Roumanille's brother 
 was out of town — he is 2i jii^^c de paix, and 
 his absence from Avignon was connected in 
 some way with the issuing of licenses for the 
 shooting season, which just then was opening. 
 They are tremendous fellows for shooting, 
 the men down there. Daudet has told about 
 it. When lions are about, they shoot lions. 
 During the close season for lions, they shoot 
 hats. It is all onv, to them. The)' have the 
 true feeling. What they care for is the sport, 
 ncjt the game. 
 
 6i
 
 62 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Fortunately, when we came again to Avi- 
 gnon the shooting season was well under way, 
 and the magisterial duties of Monsieur Gras 
 sat upon him lightly. It was arranged that 
 on the second evening after our arrival the 
 meeting which we so much desired should 
 come to pass. Yet while we longed for this 
 meeting we also a little dreaded it — know- 
 ing, by more than one disheartening experi- 
 ence, that highly idealized personalities have 
 a tendency to come tumbling down from 
 their pedestals when encountered in the 
 flesh ; and we knew that if this particular 
 idol fell he would fall a long way. In the 
 interval since we had read his " Roumancero 
 Prouvengau " in Marseilles, we had read his 
 "Tolosa" and " Li Carbounie." With the 
 reading of these poems — in which he mani- 
 fests his power of sustained flight, though 
 not always with the dramatic fervor of the 
 shorter poems which had so entranced us — 
 the pinnacle whereon we had placed him had 
 grown perilously high. 
 
 But happily, as we came to know that 
 evening, our ideal had not exceeded the re- 
 ality. As fine and as sympathetic as his 
 poems is Felix Gras himself The gracious-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 63 
 
 ness of his person, his gentle nature that also 
 is a most vigorously manly nature, his quick 
 play of wit, his smile, his voice — all were in 
 keeping with, even exceeded, what we had 
 hoped to find. 
 
 He sang to us some of his own pocnis — 
 including, at our earnest entreaty, " Lou 
 Baroun de Magalouno" and " Lou Papo 
 d'Avitrnoun " — set to airs which have come 
 down from troubadour times : curiously vi- 
 brant, haunting airs, which fell away in ca- 
 dences of a most tender melancholy, and rose 
 again with a passionate energy, and were 
 pervaded by a melody sweet and strong, 
 ilis singing was without accompaniment. 
 Holding in his hand a copy of his " Rou- 
 manceru" (it was our own copy, and is beside 
 me now as I write), he stood up in the midst 
 of our little company, and thrillingly sang 
 forth his verses from his heart. Roumanille, 
 his hands clasped comfortably across his wc^ll- 
 hlled waistcoat, beat time softly to the music 
 with his foot ; and when sonie passage es- 
 peciall)' jjleased him gave vent to his emo- 
 tion — and in this also keeping the time ol 
 the song — in a subdued iitlerance com- 
 pounded of a grunt and a roar. ^Ladame
 
 64 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Roumanille, her beautiful brown eyes glis- 
 tening a little, regarded her brother with an 
 affectionate delight, and turned to us from 
 time to time with a sympathetic smile. Mad- 
 emoiselle Therese sparkled with animation ; 
 and the demoiselle Jeanne — who already is 
 an accomplished musician, with a rare power 
 to command the presence of sweet sounds — 
 listened with a rapt expression in her half- 
 closed eyes. As for ourselves, it was as 
 though a happy dream that we had been 
 dreaming of a sudden had come true — in the 
 land of the troubadours we were hearing a 
 troubadour sing his own lays ! 
 
 We tried the good-nature of Monsieur 
 Gras sorely that evening. We could not get 
 enough of his music. We continued to de- 
 mand more and more. At last Roumanille 
 intervened in his brother-in-law's defense by 
 bringing up from the cellar a rare old bot- 
 tle of Mouscat de Maroussan — a Frontignac 
 which for thirty years had communed with 
 its own soul within the glass. As he care- 
 fully uncorked it, and poured it in a fine 
 stream into the litde glasses, the long-impris- 
 oned sunshine seemed to escape from its 
 golden flow and fill, as did its fragrance, all
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 65 
 
 the room. There was to me a grave dignity 
 about this wine, that had kept step with me 
 in the hfe journey through three quarters of 
 the way upon which I had come. Doubtless 
 Monsieur Gras had much the same feeHnof. 
 But with Roumanille the case was cHfferent — 
 he was twice as old as the Mouscat. For all 
 of us there was feeling of a deeper sort as we 
 clinked our glasses, and with our lips drank 
 to each other from our hearts. It means 
 much, this toast, in honest Provence. 
 
 Already the evening was far spent. When 
 we had thus pledged each other in aromatic 
 sunbeams, we said grood-niijht. What an 
 eveniuLT it had been ! 
 
 II 
 
 DuRixr, this long visit we saw Roumanille 
 constantly. Our quarters — in the Hotel du 
 Louvre, the old liouse of the Templars, where 
 the poet Anselme Mathicu tried his hand at 
 inn -keeping — almost adjoined the book-shop 
 in the Rue St. Agricol. But a single house 
 intervened, hrom our l)alcony we could 
 look down upon Roumanille through the 
 s
 
 66 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 side-window above his desk ; we were in and 
 out of the shop a dozen times a day ; we 
 spent dehghtfiil evenings in the friendly home 
 which was opened to us so freely ; Mademoi- 
 selle the Oueen of the Felibres was our sTuide 
 to the sights of Avignon and the Ville Neuve. 
 Our boxes of books had followed us from 
 Nimes — coming by the carter, with the le- 
 gend on each box, half warning, half appeal : 
 " Craint V humidite" — and Roumanille con- 
 gratulated us upon the good luck that had 
 attended our literary foraging. Thanks to 
 the zealous assistance of my friend Andre 
 Catelan, there were many treasures among 
 our two or three hundred volumes. During 
 our stay of two months in Nimes we had suf- 
 fered few days to slip by without spending 
 an hour or so with the good Catelan in his 
 book-shop in the Rue Thoumayne — a little 
 shop packed with books to the ceiling, and 
 having in its center an island of book-cov- 
 ered table around which was a channel so 
 narrow that only one person could sail along 
 it at a time. When, as usually was the case, 
 Catelan, Madame Catelan, and 'Toinette all 
 were on duty together, we were compelled to 
 sweep them ahead of us in a procession as
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 67 
 
 we examined the shelves. The dog, whose 
 honorable name was Ex Libris, had a freer 
 ranire — inasmuch as he could iro beneath the 
 island as well as around it. The kitten (a 
 most energetic kitten) was freest of all — 
 scampering under the island, and over its 
 book-covered surface, and across the shoul- 
 ders of any one of us who happened to come 
 in her way. Of all the old book-shops of my 
 acquaintance, none is dearer to me than this 
 in the Rue Thoumayne ; and excepting only 
 one in the City of Mexico — which shall be 
 nameless, for I still am using it — none has 
 yielded me better returns. 
 
 As Roumanille went over our books with 
 us they served as texts for his discourse. All 
 of them related to the Midi, most of them 
 to Provence or to Languedoc, and all of mod- 
 ern date were written by men who were his 
 acquaintances or friends. His commentaries 
 upon them greatly increased their practical 
 usefulness, giving us the personal factor — 
 the author's political or religious or poetical 
 bias, his reputation for care or for careless- 
 ness — which enabled us to estimate accur- 
 ately the \alue of the written words. 
 
 Roumanille told us, too, about the begin-
 
 68 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 ning of his life-work, and how that work had 
 gone on. It was with no thought of the far- 
 reaching consequences that he began to write 
 in Provengal. His sole motive was his desire 
 that his mother, to whom French was an un- 
 known tongue, might be able to understand 
 what he wrote. He was but a lad of seven- 
 teen, a teacher in the school at Tarascon, 
 when — writinor in French — he first besfan to 
 dabble in verse. One Sunday, when he was at 
 home in Saint- Remy, his mother said to him : 
 
 "Why, Jouse, they tell me that thou art 
 making paper talk ! " 
 
 " Making paper talk, mother ? " 
 
 *' Yes, that is what they tell me. What is 
 it thou art putting on the paper ? What dost 
 thou make it say ? " 
 
 " But it is nothing, mother." 
 
 " Oh, yes, my handsome Jouse, it is some- 
 thing. Tell thy mother what it is." 
 
 But when he recited to her his French 
 verses she shook her head sorrowfully, and 
 sorrowfully said to him : " I do not under- 
 stand ! " 
 
 "And then," said Roumanille, "my heart 
 rose up within me and cried : ' Write thy 
 verses in the beautiful language that thy dear 
 mother knows ! ' That very week I wrote
 
 AN EMBASSY TO I'ROVENCE 69 
 
 my first poem in IVovengal, ' Jcje " ; and, be- 
 ing at home again the next Sunday, I recited 
 it to her. When she wept, and kissed me, 
 I knew that my \'erses had found their way 
 to her heart, and thenceforth I wrote only in 
 Proven9aL" 
 
 Did ever a school of poetry more beauti- 
 fully begin ? 
 
 It was in the year 1835 that " Jeje " was 
 written, and immediately was published in 
 a little journal of Tarascon, the " Echo du 
 Rhone." All the country-side was delighted 
 by this poem in the home language ; and 
 Roumanille, being thus encouraged, rapidly 
 followed it with others of a like sort. At 
 a stroke, he had achieved a popular success. 
 
 But, as he continued to write — in prose 
 as well as in verse — the larger possibilities 
 which might flow from the revival of Proven - 
 gal as a literar)- language presented them- 
 selves to his mind. 
 
 h^or centuries, while the north of France 
 had been peopled by semi-savages, the south 
 of France had been the home of a refined 
 civilization. hVench literature had its birth 
 here in the south. The traditions of that lit- 
 erature, preserved by the troubadours, were 
 not lost ; the descendants of the troubadours
 
 70 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Still lived ; but their songs were hushed be- 
 cause the critics of the north — the ex-sav- 
 ages perched upon the heights of their 
 recently acquired civility — stigmatized Pro- 
 vengal as a dialect unfit for literary purposes; 
 as a patois. Worse than this, with their 
 tacit acceptance of a foreign jurisdiction over 
 their literary affairs, the people of Provence 
 were tending — as were all their countrymen 
 of the provinces — toward an unreserved ac- 
 ceptance of Paris as a dominating center : to 
 the deadening of that local love and local 
 pride in which true patriotism has its strong- 
 est roots. And at that particular time — the 
 seething years preceding the revolution of 
 1848 — the sort of doctrine, political and 
 social, that was emanating from Paris was 
 to the last degree subversive of the manly 
 qualities which are necessary to good citi- 
 zenship, and to the foundation of a stable 
 state. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Therefore was it in the spirit of the 
 prophets of old that Roumanille settled him-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 71 
 
 self to his life-work : the awakeninu- of a 
 
 '^> 
 
 dormant provincial literature, and the rein- 
 vigoration of a sturdy provincial manhood, 
 which together would constitute an effec- 
 tive check upon the centralizing tendency 
 whereof the object was to focus in Paris the 
 whole of France. W^ith these facts under- 
 stood, it is easy to understand also why the 
 press of Paris was united for so long a time 
 in denouncing the purpose and in deriding 
 the work of "the patois poets"; whose me- 
 lodious verse, telling not less imperiously 
 than sweetly of the reawakening of that 
 beautiful language in which P^rench litera- 
 ture was born, was a defiant proclamation 
 of local rights as opposed to central power. 
 In the broad sense of the word political, the 
 literary revival in Provence has been a polit- 
 ical force that already has made itself felt 
 throughout the whole of P>ance, and of 
 which the future will ha\'(,' much more to 
 tell. 
 
 Having grasped the possibilities of the 
 situation, Roumanille never lost sight of them 
 nor ceased to work f(jr their realization. In 
 ]>rose and in verse he delivered his homilies 
 — drcjll stories of the country-side, cjuaint
 
 t 
 
 72 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 dialogues between country-folk, poems of 
 country life, scintillating with a sharp wit 
 which ever was mellowed with a kindly hu- 
 mor, or tender with a touch of simple pathos 
 that went straight to the heart; and at the 
 end always whipping out some earnest truth, 
 as though by accident, which made in favor 
 of the honest country life and a manly mo- 
 rality. They circulated wherever the Pro- 
 vencal tongue was spoken, these sermons — 
 in newspapers, in broad-sheets, in little vol- 
 umes; and wherever they were read the seed 
 which they carried presently began to grow. 
 When Roumanille published his first collec- 
 tion of poems, ''Li Margarideto" ("The 
 Daisies"), his fellow-countrymen already 
 were sufficiently independent of Paris in 
 their opinions to be proud of this their own 
 poet who wrote in their own sweet tongue. 
 Two years before "Li Margarideto" was 
 published — that is to say, in the year 1845 
 — a disciple was raised up to this prophet 
 in the person of Frederic Mistral. He was 
 literally a disciple, for Roumanille was a 
 teacher and Mistral a pupil in a school at 
 Avignon when the friendship was formed 
 between them that was to last throughout
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 73 
 
 their lives. Mistral, a born poet, entered 
 with enthusiasm into the project for making 
 Provencal live again as a literary language ; 
 and it was he who sounded — when, in 
 1859. he published his "Mir^io" — the first 
 strong poetic note which challenged the at- 
 tention of the Paris critics; and which sud- 
 denly gave dignity to the whole mo\ement 
 by winning the hearty admiration of the 
 critic whose opinion, still respected, at that 
 time carried with it an overwhelming weight 
 of authority — Lamartine. 
 
 But the Provencal movement, gaining force 
 steadily, had assumed substantial shape five 
 years before Mistral's "Mireio" appeared. 
 In 1847 2. fresh impetus had been given to it 
 by the publication of Crousillat's first collec- 
 tion of poems. In 1852 a congress of poets 
 was held at Aries, whereat poems were recited 
 by forty poets d'Oc — including Jasmin, Bel- 
 lot, Castil-Blaze, jMouc|uin-Tandon, Crousillat, 
 Aubanel and Mistral; which poems, with a 
 striking jjreface by Saint- Rene Taillandier, 
 were gathered into a volume that was pub- 
 lished at Avignon in the same year. In 
 1853 a similar assemblage was held at Aix; 
 and the sixty-five poems recited at this
 
 74 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 gathering were published under the title : 
 " Roumavagi dei Troubaire," Finally, in 
 1854, came the crystallization — when, on the 
 2 1 St of May, being the feast of Sainte Estelle, 
 the Felibrige, the brotherhood of Provencal 
 poets, formally was founded at Fontsegugne 
 by Joseph Roumanille, Frederic Mistral, 
 Theodore Aubanel, Anselme Mathieu, Jean 
 Brunet, Paul Giera, and Alphonse Tavan. 
 
 They were of various estates, these seven 
 poets. Roumanille (he became a publisher 
 and book-dealer a year later) was a proof- 
 reader in the house of the Seguins ; Mistral 
 was the son of a yeoman ; Aubanel was a 
 publisher — the last in Avignon to bear the 
 official title of "Printer to the Pope"; Ma- 
 thieu, who became an inn-keeper later, was 
 a vine-grower — and so on. Over in Nimes, 
 soon to become a member of the fraternity, 
 was the baker Jean Reboul — to whom, being 
 dead, his fellow Nimois have erected a statue 
 to serve as a perpetual memorial of the glory 
 which his fame reflects upon their town. It 
 was a poetical democracy. The manner in 
 which its members earned a livelihood was 
 immaterial, for the writing of poetry was the 
 real and important business of their lives.
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 75 
 
 On these same lines the orcjanization is 
 maintained. Poetry is the first and the high- 
 est consideration ; after that come the ordi- 
 nary affairs of Hfe. Thus, in his off time, the 
 poet Fehx Gras is a judge ; the winner of the 
 first prize in the floral games of 1891 at Car- 
 pentras, Monsieur Lescure, devotes his leis- 
 ure to charcoal-burning; Monsieur Huat, 
 when not writing poetry, is architect to the 
 city of Marseilles ; Frere Savinien, author of 
 the Provencal grammar, absents himself 
 occasionally from the society of the Muses, 
 and attends to his minor duties as director of 
 the school of the Christian Brothers at Aries 
 — it is the same all down the line. Truly, 
 the Felibrige is one of the very noblest fra- 
 ternities in the whole world ; the single, but 
 tremendous, condition of admission to the 
 ranks of its membership is the possession 
 of an inspired soul ! 
 
 But underlying the poetry of these poets 
 is their strong desire to foster a patriotism 
 which best can be defined to American read- 
 ers as a love of country based on state rights. 
 The first article of th(; constitution of 1863 
 declares: "The Felibricre is established in 
 order tliat Provence shall forever preserve
 
 76 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 her language, her local color, her personal 
 charm, her national honor, and her high rank 
 of intelligence — because, just as she is, Pro- 
 vence delights us. And by Provence we 
 mean the whole of southern France." In the 
 existing constitution (adopted in 1876) the 
 wording is changed, but not the substance : 
 " The Felibrige is established in order to unite 
 in brotherhood, and to inspire, those men 
 whose efforts are directed toward preserving 
 the language of the country d'Oc." Yet it is 
 in no narrow spirit that these apostles of in- 
 dividuality carry on their propaganda. They 
 insist upon being individual themselves, but 
 they seek to encourage a like individuality in 
 others. Roumanille spoke with the same 
 hearty satisfaction of the spread of the feli- 
 brien idea throughout France, and even 
 into foreign countries, as he did of its triumph 
 in Provence. 
 
 In its organization, the Felibrige is practi- 
 cal; but in its systems of feasts, its awards of 
 merit, its symbolism, it is poetical to a high 
 deeree. Doubtless its beautiful ritual — a 
 large part of which it owes to its distin- 
 guished Irish member, Mr. Bonaparte -Wyse 
 — has had much to do with its practical work-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE TJ 
 
 inof success. In all this delicate fancifulness, 
 which so vividly reflects the poetic tempera- 
 ment, there is found an irresistible appeal to 
 poetic souls. The brotherhood has substan- 
 tial strength because flowers are its prizes, the 
 passing of the loving-cup a necessary part ot 
 its feasts, Ste. Estelle its patroness, and its 
 device her star of seven rays. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was during our longer stay in Avignon 
 that we presented ourselves — formally, as an 
 Embassy ; and very informally, as individuals 
 — to Mistral at his home in the village of 
 Maillane. Close by this village he was born, 
 and here always, save for short absences, he 
 has lived. 
 
 PVom Avignon to Maillane the distance is 
 not more than six or eight miles. We made 
 it half as long again by fetching a compass 
 roundabout by way of Chateau-Renard — a 
 very ghost of a castle: its two tall, round 
 towers, and a part of the wall which once 
 stood solidly between them, rising ruinously
 
 78 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 from a mass of ruins scattered over the top of 
 a stiff little conical hill. Tradition declares 
 that a subterranean passage, dipping beneath 
 the Durance, connects Chateau-Renard with 
 the Palace of the Popes in Avignon. Mistral 
 has used the legend in a thrilling fashion — 
 sending his lovely Nerto flying through this 
 dismal place, and making very real the fear 
 that besets her as she hears the rush of the 
 river above her head, and the grinding and 
 pounding of the great stones which are 
 whirled along the rocky bed of the stream. 
 Modern engineers have had the effrontery to 
 assert that the passage is impossible ; but I 
 am the last person in the world who would 
 set an idle engineering fiction in array against 
 an established poetic fact. I do not doubt 
 for a moment that the passage exists. 
 
 Our way led across the wide valley of the 
 Durance, by the suspension -bridge at Rogno- 
 nas, amidst market-gardens and vineyards 
 and fruit orchards. Little canals went every- 
 where throuorh the fields, that the river mieht 
 give life to the land. Tall hedges of cypress, 
 planted for protection against the strong mis- 
 trals of winter, cut the landscape with long 
 lines of dark green. Upon the road we
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 79 
 
 passed flocks of sheep returning for the win- 
 ter from the high pastures in the French 
 Alps ; and with one of these was a sedate 
 ass who carried in broad shallow panniers the 
 lambs too young or too tired to walk. We 
 accepted these flocks gratefully, not in the 
 least doubting that they had materialized 
 from "Mireio" for our benefit. Here was 
 the shepherd Alari coming down to the 
 plain ; here even was the delicate touch of 
 "I'agneloun qu'es las" — the weary lamb. 
 Indeed, all that country-side seemed familiar 
 to us, so completely has Mistral transferred to 
 his pages its every part. 
 
 IMaillane is a villaij^e bowered in trees and 
 girded about with gardens. According to 
 the " Guide Joanne" it possesses three claims 
 upon the attention of the public : a beau 
 retable in its ancient church ; in its archives 
 a parchment of the year 1400; and — the 
 writer has a proper feeling for climax — "it 
 counts among its 1342 inhabitants the poet 
 Frederic Mistral." 
 
 When we asked the driver of our carriage 
 if he knew where to find the house of Mon- 
 sieur Mistral, he looked at us with an expres- 
 sion of pitying doubt — it was much as though
 
 8o AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 we had asked him if he knew where to look 
 at noonday for the sun. His manner toward 
 us had been gentle and considerate from the 
 start. After that question it became quite 
 fatherly. His feeling evidently was that peo- 
 ple so largely ignorant required protecting 
 care. 
 
 Mistral's home is a modest dwelling of two 
 stories, standing on the border of the village, 
 and separated from the street by a little gar- 
 den and a low stone wall surmounted by a 
 railing of iron. With a serene indifference 
 to the ordinary scheme of arrangement, the 
 house backs upon the street, and fronts upon 
 a deep garden and the open country beyond. 
 From the windows of the principal rooms — 
 the library, the salon, the chambers above — 
 the outlook is upon trees and flowers and 
 green fields and orchards and vineyards, all 
 roofed over with the blue sky of Provence. 
 Nothing could be better. It is a poet's prac- 
 tical way of keeping the poetry of nature 
 always before his eyes. The deep, wide gar- 
 den is a delight : sunny and sheltered for 
 winter, with shady alleys for summer idling, 
 uniting the useful with the ornamental by 
 giving room to vegetables and fruit-trees, as
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 8i 
 
 well as to shrubs and flowers, and havinsf as 
 its chief glory a great hedge of nerto — as 
 myrtle is called in Provencal — which has a 
 reflected glory because Mistral has bestowed 
 upon his gracious heroine its musical name. 
 
 - 1 --f ••■ 'v 
 
 V . »J.'. 
 
 - --^ Kl 
 
 All was still as we stopped before the 
 closed iron gateway — so very still as to 
 suggest the dismal possil)ility that the poet 
 was off on one of his country walks, and 
 that our coming was in vain. But our fa- 
 therly driver, knowing that the front of this 
 house was its back, was more confident. 
 Charging me to be watchful of the horse (it 
 pleased him to maintain the flattering fiction 
 that this sheep-like animal was all energy 
 and tire), he placed the reins in my hands, 
 and then went off around the corner of the 
 house witli our cards. We had not brought 
 a letter ol introduction; but our visit, thougli 
 no da\' had been set for it, was expected — 
 f(jr Roumanille had made known to Mistral 
 that an American Kmbassy was at large in 
 
 6
 
 82 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 the land, and that sooner or later it would 
 present itself at Maillane. We heard the 
 tinkle of a bell inside the house, then a faint 
 sound of voices, then quick footsteps on the 
 gravel walk — and in a moment Mistral was 
 coming- toward us with outstretched hands. 
 
 What a noble-looking, poet-like poet he 
 was ! Over six feet high, broad-shouldered, 
 straight as an arrow, elate in carriage, vigor- 
 ous — with only his grey hair, and his nearly 
 white mustache and imperial, to certify to his 
 fifty years. In one respect his photographic 
 portraits do him injustice. His face is haughty 
 in repose, and this expression is emphasized 
 by his commanding presence and resolute air. 
 But no one ever thinks of Mistral as haughty 
 who has seen him smile. It is as frank as 
 his manner, this smile ; all his face is lit up by 
 the friendliness that is in his warm Provencal 
 heart. 
 
 In a flash he had us out of the carriage, 
 around the house, through the wide entrance- 
 hall paved with tiles and hung about with 
 prints, and so into his library — and all to an 
 accompaniment of the most cordial welcoming 
 talk. Roumanille had told him all about us, 
 he said ; we were not strangers, we were
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 83 
 
 friends. Heaven bless these Proven^aiix ! 
 What a genuine hospitahty is theirs ! 
 
 Never did a poet have a better work-room 
 than this hbrary. Overlooking the garden 
 are two wide, high windows, close beside 
 one of which is a writing-table of liberal 
 size ; prints hang upon the walls ; the side 
 opposite to the windows is filled with a tall 
 case of books. The collection of books is 
 not a large one (not more than a thousand 
 volumes), but it is very rich. For four 
 months I had been making my own little 
 collection on the same lines, and my evil 
 heart was stirred with covetousness as I saw 
 upon these shelves so many volumes which 
 my good Catelan had told me were to be 
 obtained only by some rare turn of lucky 
 chance. But the book which Mistral first 
 selected for us to look at was not one of these 
 prizes in the literary lotter)-; it was a beauti- 
 fully bound copy of Miss Preston's translation 
 of "Mireio." Before returning it to its place 
 he held it for a moment affectionately in his 
 hand. 
 
 In the same earnest strain in which Rou- 
 manille had spoken, he spoke of the strong 
 motives underlying the literary movement in
 
 84 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Provence. There was much more in it, he 
 said, than the desire to revive a beautiful lan- 
 guage that had fallen into undeserved neglect. 
 The soul of it was the firm purpose to array 
 against centralization the love of locality, of 
 home, 'Tf our movement," he continued, 
 " were restricted to Provence, it might be 
 regarded without injustice as the last gleam 
 of a dying glory, as the last effort of a na- 
 tionality about to expire. But it is not so 
 restricted. Languedoc, Dauphiny, Gascony, 
 Brittany are with us. And our revival ex- 
 tends beyond the borders of France. In 
 Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, Majorca ; in 
 Italy, Hungary, Roumania, Bohemia, Flan- 
 ders, even in Iceland, there is a revival of the 
 ancient tongues. All this is not the work of 
 chance, nor the result of the effort of a single 
 group of men. It is the natural and inevi- 
 table result of the realization by each of these 
 widely scattered peoples that in their national 
 language resides their national soul. The 
 Felibrige is the legitimate and providential 
 child of the epoch in which we live. 
 
 " Here in France we have not souorht 
 unduly to exalt Provence or Provencal. We 
 have urged our brethren of the other ancient
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 85 
 
 toni»ues to do what wc have tried to do for 
 ourselves — to add to their own store of hte- 
 rary treasure, to maintain their own customs, 
 to preserve their own traditions ; and yet, 
 while thus holding- fast to their own individ- 
 uality, to cherish as their most noble posses- 
 sion their right to be a part of France."^ 
 
 VI 
 
 Madame Mistral joined us : a young and 
 beautiful woman with a peculiarly sweet, sym- 
 pathetic voice. Our talk turned to Mistral's 
 work. It pleased him to find that we pos- 
 sessed all of his poems, and even his "Tresor 
 dou Felibrige" — his great Provengal-French 
 dictionary, 2300 triple-columned folio pages, 
 to the compilation of which he devoted nearly 
 ten years. 
 
 He sighed as he spoke of the dictionary, as 
 well he might in memory of the labor that he 
 
 1 " Whether we speak French or Provengal, 't is all the same. 
 We understand each other. And there is one phrase that has the 
 same sound in both languages; a phrase we all know, a heartfelt 
 cry. This phrase, this cry, is — 'Vive la France! '" Speech of the 
 Capoulie Felix Gras, at Carpentras, September 15, 1891. 
 6*
 
 86 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 had expended upon it for pure love. Yet has 
 this work repaid him in honor. It has placed 
 him beside Littre among French men of let- 
 ters, and it has won for him the formal appro- 
 bation of the Institut Fran9ais. In recog- 
 nition of its high value, the Academic des 
 Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of the Institut 
 aw-arded to him (March 28, 1890) the Jean 
 Reynaud prize of 10,000 francs: a prize — 
 given every five years "to recompense the most 
 important work produced in that period in 
 studies within the compass of the Academy " 
 — that is one of the highest literary honors 
 (short of election to the body whence it em- 
 anates) which a French man of letters can 
 receive. 
 
 Primarily, the " Tresor " is a dictionary of 
 all the languages of Oc {i. e., the languages in 
 which oc is the equivalent of yes) ; but it also 
 is much more than a dictionary, being, liter- 
 ally, a treasury of information concerning the 
 languages, the customs, the traditions of the 
 south of France. It is not, as his poems are, 
 the result of inspiration ; it is the product of 
 a profound scholarship backed by indefati- 
 gable labor extending over many years. In- 
 deed, it seems impossible that the same man 
 should have distinguished himself so greatly
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 87 
 
 in such widcl)- different ways. As M. Michel 
 Breal (in presenting to Mistral the prize of 
 the Academy, at Montpelier, May 25, 1890) 
 well said: "A time will come when learned 
 men, finding themselves confronted by this 
 enormous philological work and by Mistral's 
 poems, will say that there must have been 
 two Frederic Mistrals, as there were two 
 Pliny s — thus evading the tax upon their 
 credulity involved in believing that so much 
 science and so much poetry were contained 
 in the same brain." 
 
 Naturally, his poems stand nearest to the 
 poet's heart. He spoke of them with a frank 
 pleasure, and of the local material embodied 
 in them — this being a part of his own be- 
 loved country — with delight. To gratify our 
 desire to associate the sound of his voice with 
 his written words, he read to us, from "La 
 Reino Jano," the speech of Aufan de Siste- 
 roun, in which the troubadour urges the 
 Queen to leave Naples and to come to Pro- 
 vence — '' cctte pcrle royalc, Vabrcge, la vioiih'e 
 ct le miroir du moiidcr It was not a reading^ 
 at random : 
 
 Accedant en g^n^ral \ votre douce autorite, 
 
 Li chaque ville vit de son droit naturel, 
 
 Et librement travaille, ou dort, 011 chante, on one,
 
 88 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 declares the troubadour — precisely the doc- 
 trine which Mistral himself had just been ad- 
 vancing, of separate individual rights united 
 in support of high authority. 
 
 All this Provengal poetry gains greatly by 
 being read aloud. There is music in the 
 broad, sonorous sounds, and a rhythm in the 
 composition so marked that frequently it is 
 almost an air. Much of the verse evidently 
 is written, consciously or unconsciously, to 
 music. I noticed that Roumanille — writing a 
 dedication in a volume that he had presented 
 to the Ambassadress — beat time as he put 
 the lines together in his mind ; and not until 
 the measure satisfied him did he write them 
 down. 
 
 We were conscious of our privilege in hear- 
 ing Mistral read his own poetry ; and this 
 privilege was enlarged when he sang to us 
 the " Song of the Rowers" — as the Queen is 
 borne out upon the bay of Naples in her 
 barge — to an ancient thrilling air of the sort 
 which had so moved us when we had listened 
 to the singing of Felix Gras. I hope that 
 he understood how gfrateful we were to him. 
 King Louis of Bavaria, listening royally soli- 
 tary to an opera, alone could be our parallel !
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 89 
 
 From his own poems we went on to speak 
 of Provengal poetry generally ; of the poems 
 which we had read, and of the poets whom 
 we had been so fortunate as to know person- 
 all)- — and especially of the strong friendship 
 which these men had for each other, their 
 freedom from petty jealousy, and their warm 
 appreciation of each other's work. It was a 
 part of their creed, he said, this friendliness. 
 All were working together, as missionaries, as 
 apostles, to a common ^nd. Under these con- 
 ditions mutual support was necessary, and 
 jealousy was impossible — and again he in- 
 sisted upon the sincerity and the depth of 
 purpose which animated their literary move- 
 ment and made it also broadly humane. 
 
 VII 
 
 While we talked, a lank dog with a bris- 
 tling black coat — a creature of no particular 
 breed — jumped up on the wide outer ledge 
 of the window and peered in upon us. His 
 face had a ([uizzical cast, and his manncT was 
 so bantering that a charge of insolence would
 
 90 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 have lain against him but for the look of 
 good-humored drollery in his eyes. Having 
 completed his survey, he jumped down from 
 the window-ledge, and a moment later came 
 in through the open door to make us his com- 
 pliments — with the easy, rather swaggering 
 air of an old campaigner whose habit it was 
 to pass the time of day with all strangers on 
 the chance of a dish of racy talk. 
 
 The genesis of this dog was as eccentric as 
 himself He had "come up out of the ground," 
 as Mistral expressed it — suddenly appearing 
 in the course of one of the poet's country 
 walks, and immediately adopting him as a 
 master. No one in all the country-side ever 
 had seen him, or one like him. But with the 
 assurance that was so conspicuous a trait in 
 his nature, he had declined to be regarded as 
 a stranger. He had made himself entirely at 
 home in a moment, and had accepted with 
 equanimity the name of Pain-perdu — he 
 was no stickler for names, provided rations 
 went with them — that was bestowed upon 
 him : partly because of his famished condi- 
 tion, and partly in memory of the troubadour 
 so called. He was a doo- of mastic. Mistral 
 declared, who had started up from nowhere,
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 91 
 
 and who had thrust himself, either for good 
 or for evil, into his new master's life. 
 
 But the poet cherished also the fancy that 
 the dog — supposing him to be a real dog — 
 was a waif from the Wild West Show; which 
 aggregation of American talent had passed 
 northward from Marseilles to Paris about the 
 time that Pain-perdu materialized. Mistral 
 has so much the look of Mr. Cody — a resem- 
 blance not a little helped by the slouched felt 
 hat that he habitually wears — that in Paris 
 he has been repeatedly pointed out on the 
 streets as " Boofalo"; and he argued that Pain- 
 perdu had adopted him for a master because 
 of this resemblance. He becfored that I 
 would speak to the dog in English; and it 
 is a fact that the uncanny creature cocked 
 his head at me with a most knowing look, 
 and did seem to understand my words. 
 
 An older and more important member of 
 the family is Marcabrun, a large grey cat 
 of so dignified a habit that he niight with 
 propriety wear ermine, instead ul his own 
 grey coat, and sit upon the bench. We were 
 bidden to observe that he was not a toy cat 
 — one of those long-haired, bushy-tailed crea- 
 tures to which the Parisians art; devoted —
 
 92 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 but a sturdy, mouse-catching-, working cat, 
 of honest Egyptian descent; a cat whose con- 
 scientious discharge of his duties was honor- 
 able to himself and useful to his friends. "I 
 have a very sincere affection for cats," said 
 Mistral, as he gently stroked Marcabrun's 
 jowls. "And I am persuaded," he added 
 gravely, " that their knowledge extends to 
 many things too subtle for the human mind 
 to grasp ! " 
 
 We passed to the salon, where Madame 
 Mistral had a tray of liqueurs in readiness 
 for the ceremony — which on our side cer- 
 tainly had in it much earnestness — of drink- 
 ing to each other's health, and to the con- 
 tinuance of the friendship that had begun that 
 day. And then we touched glasses again in 
 honor of the poets and poetry of Provence. 
 
 The day was waning. It was time for us 
 to come away. We lingered for a few min- 
 utes in the garden, while Madame gathered 
 for the Ambassadress a bunch of flowers, to 
 which the poet added (running down to the 
 hedge to get it) a spray of nerto. It is pre- 
 served as a precious relic, this bunch of nerto; 
 and though in truth it has become dry and 
 yellow, to us it always will seem fragrant and
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 93 
 
 green. Then they came with us to the gate, 
 and stood waving farewells after us until a 
 turn in the street hid them from our view. 
 Here was another case in which ideals had 
 stood the test of comparison with realities. 
 
 We drove back by the direct road — 
 through Graveson and Rognonas, and so 
 across the Durance and on into Avi^'non. 
 Althouijh a stroncr mistral was blowino- — 
 with which usually goes a brilliantly clear 
 sky — clouds had gathered in the west. Into 
 these clouds, beyond the line of hills on the 
 farther side of the Rhone, the sun was 
 sinking. To the eastward, the distant Alps 
 loomed shadowy. In their forefront, tipped 
 with red sunlight, towered Mont Ventour — 
 as high above the lesser peaks as a great 
 poet is above the common level of mankind.
 
 PART FOURTH 
 
 '"^^HAT we should eo to the Fountain of 
 
 t> 
 
 V ■ 
 
 X \ aucluse was a matter of necessity. As 
 the ambassadors of a poet we were, in a sense, 
 poets ourselves ; and for even a vicarious poet 
 to be within a dozen miles of this time-honored 
 shrine of poetic love and yet not visit it would 
 be a sort of nei^ative sacrilecfe, an outrao-e of 
 neglect. 
 
 To be sure, as troubadours, we were dis- 
 posed to look with but little favor upon the 
 chillingly precise verses which the calm Pe- 
 trarch addressed to his calm Laura ; to regard 
 somewhat disdainfully an ardor so prudently 
 iced. But — whether we approved or disap- 
 proved of his methods of love-making — the 
 fact remained that this Signor Petrarch merited 
 some token of outward respect from us, for the 
 
 )n that he belouL.'^fKl to our brotherhood 
 
 95 
 
 reasc., ...... ... .^
 
 96 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 and was one of ourselves. Therefore we de- 
 cided that before going to Saint-Remy and to 
 Salon we would bear away eastward to the 
 Fountain of Vaucluse, and pay his memory a 
 passing call. 
 
 La Ponette and the shabby little carriage 
 were brousfht forth from the stables of the 
 Hotel de I'Europe — which we were led to 
 infer from the hostler's supercilious air had 
 been somewhat contaminated by giving shelter 
 to our poverty-stricken equipage. On the 
 other hand, had the humble Ponette known 
 how lordly a price we paid for her subsistence 
 in this aristocratic establishment, I am con- 
 fident that her short and very thick head 
 would have been completely turned. That 
 our own heads were a little turned by the 
 parallel process in our own case is undeniable. 
 For several days after emerging from our 
 golden and crimson quarters we maintained 
 the fiction that we were ticket-of-leave sover- 
 eigns, and made a point of addressing each 
 other as " Your Grace." 
 
 Amidst the open smiles of the waiters, 
 stable-boys, and other hangers-on of the Hotel 
 de I'Europe, we drove forth from the court- 
 yard and shaped our course — having a cargo
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 97 
 
 of books to pick up at Roumanille's shop — 
 for the Rue St. Ao-ricol. All the members of 
 the household flocked out to feast their eyes 
 upon our car of state drawn by our gallant 
 steed. As I close my eyes I can see Rou- 
 manille leaning for support against the door- 
 jamb, and I can hear the ring of his laugh. 
 We had endeavored to prepare him for the 
 spectacle ; but he told us frankly, in a voice 
 broken with emotion, that what he had re- 
 crarded as efforts of our imaoination had q^iven 
 him but a feeble notion of the truth. But 
 Roumanille was forced to admit — as we 
 stowed the books in the locker beneath the 
 seat, and disposed of the big package of pho- 
 tographs between the apron and the dash- 
 board — that a good deal was to be said in 
 favor of our conveyance on the score of prac- 
 tical convenience. What it seemed to lack, he 
 said, was style. 
 
 Our parting that day was only temporary. 
 We were to come back presently — traveling 
 like ordinary mortals in an ordinary railway- 
 carriaofe — for a lonj^ visit. Therefore we said 
 an rcvoir with good heart, and got under way 
 without regret — Rounianille standing out on 
 the pavement, still laughing, until the turn 
 7
 
 98 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 into the Cours de la Republique hid him from 
 our sight. 
 
 Over our passage down this street, the 
 Broadway of Avignon, I draw a veil. It is 
 sufficient to say that we attracted more atten- 
 tion, a great deal more, than our modesty 
 desired. It was with a si Mi of relief that we 
 passed the city gate, and so came in a few 
 minutes into the quiet country road leading 
 eastward to L'lsle-sur-Soreue. There are 
 times in one's life, and this was one of them, 
 wdien the grateful vacancy of the country 
 brings rest and soothing to the mind harried 
 by a city's noise and crowd. 
 
 Our way led eastward ; but we actually 
 took a route southeastward, that we might 
 spend a few hours in the gay company of the 
 swiftest and most joyous river in all Europe, 
 the Durance. It was a charming road, this, 
 that led us through parks and gardens from 
 the outer edge of the valley to the riverside. 
 Great trees arched over us ; pollard willows 
 were ranofed alone the irriofatinof canals in 
 unending lines ; the soft gurgling sound of 
 flowinof water filled the air. Now and then 
 we met or passed a friendly traveler with 
 whom we exchanged greetings. From an old
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 99 
 
 Stone gateway, just touched by a sunbeam 
 that penetrated the thick foHage above it, a 
 httle girl came out and held up for our admira- 
 tion her new doll — a very Sheban of a doll, 
 dressed in vivid yellow and girded with a 
 scarlet sash. The Ponette jogged along in 
 her own slow way, and we did not hurry her. 
 Had she known our humor, she would have 
 turned it to her private profit by going at 
 a walk. 
 
 About noon, swinging away to the north, 
 we parted company with the Durance at Bon- 
 pas. It is a silk-factory, now, this ancient ab- 
 bev — a chanee fit to make the dust of Simon 
 Langham, the Archbishop of Canterbury who 
 built the abbey church, compact itself again 
 and arise in the shape of a curse. The Bridge- 
 building Brothers threw a bridge of stone 
 across the river here ; but the river promptly 
 threw it off again, and its several successors 
 after it. Now, quite in keeping with the silk- 
 factory, the streani is spanned by a suspen- 
 sion-bridge — the only sort of structure that 
 this liirht-hearted devil of a river does not 
 sooner or later get the better of 
 
 Across the valley, a couple of miles away, 
 is Noves, where of old Laura \\\v\\. Vor a
 
 loo AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 moment we hung- in the wind, at the fork of 
 the road, while we debated the propriety of 
 turning- aside to visit her former habitation. 
 But Laura is distinctly a second-rate person- 
 age. The best that can be said of her is that 
 she was the consignee of Petrarch's verses. 
 The debate was a short one. 
 
 " We cannot be at the mercy of every whiff 
 of Fancy's breeze," said the Ambassador. 
 
 "We must occasionally be firm to our in- 
 tentions," said the Ambassadress. 
 
 And, having uttered these resolute words 
 of wisdom, we turned our backs upon Noves 
 and Laura, and bore away for Thor. We had 
 been assured, I may say in passing, that in 
 Thor, at the little Hotel de Notre Dame, we 
 should get a good breakfast ; had we pos- 
 sessed a like assurance in regard to the 
 breakfast possibilities of Noves, the case thus 
 decided against Laura might have gone 
 differently. 
 
 II 
 
 Midway in the village of Thor the highway 
 takes a sharp turn ; and just in its bend, so
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE loi 
 
 that the traveler cannot possibly miss it, is 
 the hospitably open entrance to the Hotel 
 de Notre Dame. A woman nursinL;" a plump 
 baby rose to greet us as we drove in, and a 
 stern hostler — haxini:" the look and manner 
 of Prince Bismarck — came forth from the 
 stable and took charge ol the mare. That we 
 might wash away the dust of our journey, we 
 were shown to a little box c:)f a bedroom. All 
 the floors were of stone ; the steins of the nar- 
 row stair were of stone, worn deeply ; and in 
 keeping with this fine flavor of anticjuity was 
 the garnishing of the kitchen fireplace with 
 delightful tiles. Excepting the new humanity 
 that had come into it, I doubt if there had 
 been the smallest chanofe in this whole estab- 
 lishment for a round two hundred years. The 
 bab\- was verv new indeed, ami his \oun«" 
 mother thouLi'ht the world of him. She held 
 him on one arm durinof most of the time that 
 she was engaged in getting breakfast ready, 
 but popped him down anywhere — on the table 
 or into a basket lialf filled with potatoes — when 
 she required the use of botli hands. When at 
 last breakfast was served, he was stowed away 
 in a big cradle in one corner of the dining- 
 room. 
 
 7*
 
 I02 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Four people breakfasted with us ; but they 
 all were shy and taciturn, and only one of 
 them — a carter in his shirt-sleeves — looked 
 interestingf. Had we been alone with the car- 
 ter, we should have made friends with him ; 
 but he was oppressed, as w^e were, by the chill 
 presence of the other half of our company, 
 and devoted his large mouth solely to eating 
 and drinking. Yet was he naturally a voluble 
 man, and with a fine loud voice : as we 
 knew — a moment after he had bolted his last 
 mouthful, and had left the table with a jerky 
 bow — by hearing him roaring away in ani- 
 mated talk with Prince Bismarck outside. 
 
 On the wall of the dining-room was a notice 
 stating that the Mayor of Thor had the honor 
 to inform the public that the annual market 
 of grapes of all qualities would be held in the 
 commune, at the accustomed place, on the 
 25th of August and the 15th of October, 
 proximo. All about the town were vineyards, 
 and the crisp aromatic smell of the ripening 
 grapes hung heavy in the air. At the little 
 cafe, whither we went when our breakfast 
 was ended, the old man who served us spoke 
 of the vintage with enthusiasm. The vines 
 had done well, wonderfully well, he said. A
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 103 
 
 great harvest was assured. "And when our 
 grapes are good," he added jolHly, "we laugh 
 and jingle our money in our pockets through 
 all the rest of the year." 
 
 He was charmingly talkative, this old man 
 — quite unlike the sad company at breakfast 
 that had erected a chill barrier of silence be- 
 tween the carter and ourselves. My pipe ap- 
 pealed to him. "It is a fine large pipe that 
 monsieur smokes," he said cordially. "And 
 is it realh' so lio;ht as they sa\-. this German 
 cla\' ? Will monsieur indeed permit me ? . . . 
 j\Ion Die II, how lio-ht ! What a wonder of a 
 pipe it is ! " After the severe repression to 
 which our natures had been subjected at 
 breakfast, coming into the presence of this 
 "•enial old man was like comino- forth into 
 sunshine from a cold, dark room. 
 
 While the Ponette rested — what she had 
 to rest from Heaven onl)- knows ; in all the 
 morning she had covered only eight or ten 
 miles — we paid our respects to the unknown 
 architect who seven hundred )ears ago built 
 the church for which Thor ever since has been 
 famed. This duty to art and antiquity being 
 discharged, we ascended into our chariot, and 
 then the Ponette's scarcely perceptible pro-
 
 104 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 gress detached us gently from Thor, and set 
 us adrift in the direction of L'lsle-sur-Sororue. 
 From the one town to the other is but a 
 step. Even the Ponette could not make 
 a journey of it. By mid-afternoon we were 
 bowling along the shady main street, beside 
 the main channel of the Sorgue, at a spirited 
 walk; and so came gallantly to the door of the 
 Hotel St. Martin. It is customary for visitors 
 to the Fountain of Vaucluse to stop at the 
 Hotel de Petrarque-et-Laure ; but in our case 
 — apart from our coolness toward those cool 
 lovers — there was so much of appositeness in 
 finding shelter for ourselves and our beggarly 
 equipage at a hotel presided over by St. Mar- 
 tin that we did not hesitate for a moment in 
 making our choice. 
 
 Ill 
 
 L'IsLE is nothing less than a fascination — 
 a tiny Venice, without the bad smells. The 
 Sorgue, outflowing from the near-by Fountain 
 of Vaucluse^ divides above the town into three 
 channels, which below it are united again into 
 a single stream. Upon the northern island, 
 and around about it, the town is built. The
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 105 
 
 main stream, at its widest but a couple of rods 
 across, shaded by ancient trees, flows beside 
 the highwa\- — which also is the principal 
 street of the town. Stone bridges span it here 
 and there ; broad flights of stone steps, with 
 the look of having escaped from a drop- 
 curtain, lead down to its margin and are 
 thronged with operatic washerwomen ; huge 
 undershot wheels slowl)- revolve in it (a good 
 deal of unpoetic carpet-weaving is done here), 
 and suggest melodramatic possibilities of a 
 thrillinor and shuddering: sort — there beinir al- 
 ways about a great water-wheel something 
 very horrible that sends a chill to one's heart. 
 The southern branch flows along the town's 
 outskirts ; and the northern, not more than 
 six or eight feet wide, runs in a strait channel 
 between the houses — and even under them — 
 with doors and windows opening upon the 
 stream. All day long the cool sound of 
 rippling water is in the air ; and its lulling 
 tinkle comes soothingly across the soft silence 
 of the night. 
 
 It was the boast of the people of L'Isle 
 in former times — before there was thrust 
 upon the Fountain of Vaucluse a desecrating 
 paper-mill — lIiaL they could sit at their case 
 in their hou.ses and fish for trout and eels
 
 io6 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 through their open doors. Noble traditions 
 survive of these dainties, and of a certain 
 dehcate variety of crawfish, with which the 
 Soro^ue did once abound. According to the 
 guide-books and the hotel people, the Sorgue 
 abounds with them still ; and the represen- 
 tative of St. Martin even went so far as to 
 assure us that the specimens served for our 
 delectation had come from the river to the 
 pan with but a single bound. Yet, in point 
 of fact, because of that vile paper-mill, the 
 fish of the Sorgue are all as dead as Julius 
 Csesar. The hotel fish really come from the 
 Gardon — clear on the other side of the 
 Rhone — and do their bounding in the wake 
 of a locomotive by gi^ande vitessc. This 
 painful secret was imparted to us by the 
 proprietor of the cafe : an intelligent young 
 man who had no motive for abetting the local 
 fiction, and whose business was of a sort to 
 set him a little at odds with the proprietors of 
 the hotels. 
 
 IV 
 
 While these facts in reo^ard to the migrant 
 nature of the fish of L'Isle were beinsf con-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 107 
 
 fided to US — we were taking our after-dinner 
 coffee — a man passed by beating loudly upon 
 a drum. His untempered music, we found, 
 was the announcement of a play to be given 
 that very evening in an open-air theater 
 down by the water-side in the rear of our 
 hotel. The players, said our young man, 
 were the wreckage of a strolling company 
 that had gone to pieces in L'Isle a month or 
 two before ; they gave occasional perform- 
 ances to keep themselves alive until some 
 happy turn of fortune should enable them to 
 get awa)-. 
 
 As we found when we had come to it, this 
 open-air theater justified its name. The 
 stage was a raised and covered platform, 
 wath a practicable curtain; but the seats, cut 
 off from the rest of the universe b)' a wooden 
 fence, had between them and the sky only 
 some chance branches of trees. The best 
 seats — two rows of chairs which stood in 
 front of the eieht or ten lines of benches 
 without backs — cost twenty centimes. We 
 unhesitatingly paid our eight cents, and took 
 places in the front row. 
 
 There were six players, all told, and the 
 cast included seven characters. In the first 
 act the Villain — quite a desperate villain —
 
 io8 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 very properly was killed ; but in the second 
 act he confused us by reappearing — it was 
 the same man in precisely the same cos- 
 tume — alive and well. As the play went 
 on, however, we discovered that he had ceased 
 to be the VillaiJi, and at a stroke had become 
 his own uncle and the respectable father of 
 the Marchio7iess. We inferred that there was 
 a shortness in the wardrobe as well as in the 
 company ; and this probability was empha- 
 sized by the references in the lines to the 
 somber black in which the Mai'chioiicss was 
 clad, when, actually, that interesting young 
 widow was arrayed in a gown of exceptionally 
 bright blue. 
 
 Between the tragedy and the farce the In- 
 gmtte came out among the audience and sup- 
 plemented the gate-money by taking up a 
 collection in a tin box, her efforts being most 
 pointedly directed to squeezing something out 
 of the crowd that was massed outside the rail- 
 ing and had not paid anything at all. The 
 Diicna, not cast in the farce, resumed posses- 
 sion of her brace of children, who had been in 
 the care of friends on the benches, and went 
 home with them when the tragedy was at an 
 end. We heard her say something about 
 breakfast the next day and a pot of tripe. At
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 109 
 
 the end of the performance the Tyrajit made 
 us all a handsome speech of thanks, and an- 
 nounced that on the ensuing Thursday the 
 company would have the honor of presenting 
 the tra<>fedv of *' leanne d'Arc," to be followed 
 by a side-splitting farce. I was disposed to 
 arise in m\ place and to assure the Tyrant 
 that for ourselves the obligation was wholly 
 on our side. It was a longing of our hearts 
 realized — this veritable bit out of " Le Capi- 
 taine TVacasse." 
 
 Before returning to our quarters, we walked 
 for a while in the starlight beside the Sorgue: 
 seeking to attune our souls by its rippling 
 music to the key of poesy litting to the pil- 
 orrimace on the ensuinor day to the Fountain 
 of Yaucluse. In this endeavor we succeeded 
 so well lliat I was beginning to put together 
 an apostrophic sonnet to Laura and Petrarch, 
 when sleep overtook me and obliterated the 
 concluding ten of the necessary fourteen lines. 
 And then, at five o'clock in the morning, came 
 the proprietor of tlie I lolcl St. Martin, with 
 violent knockings, to inform me that the
 
 no AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 Ponette had developed a severe colic and was 
 in a very bad way indeed ! 
 
 For all the remainder of my days the Foun- 
 tain of Vaucluse will be associated in my mind 
 with the keen internal miseries of that dull 
 little mare. Never will I hear a reference to 
 Laura and Petrarch without instantly remem- 
 bering the unpoetic nature of my frequent 
 conferences with the veterinary surgeon, who 
 was the better, as I was the worse, on each 
 of these occasions by two francs. 
 
 It was the late Lord Verulam who made 
 the astute observation (in his essay " Of Sedi- 
 tions and Troubles") that "the rebellions of 
 the belly are the worst." But even my Lord 
 Verulam, who was blessed with a fine vein of 
 fancy, never imagined a rebellion of this na- 
 ture at so inopportune a time. Instead of 
 reveling in a luxury of poetic reminiscence, I 
 was forced to dwell upon the prosaic details 
 of equine pathology ; while a haunting dread 
 beset me of what would happen should the 
 sluggish soul of the Ponette separate itself 
 from her sluggish body, and so bring me to 
 a direful reckoning with Noe Mourgue at 
 Nimes ! 
 
 Happily for me, the Ponette was endowed 
 with so vigorous a constitution that she did
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE in 
 
 not succumb to her painful disorder. By the 
 ensuing morning- she practically was well 
 again, the veterinary surgeon assured me ; 
 and as his interest was wholly against this 
 statement, I did not doubt that he spoke the 
 truth. But it was with chastened spirits that 
 we drove her gingerly to the Fountain of 
 \^aucluse ; and our conversation turned not 
 upon Laura and Petrarch, but upon the pos- 
 sible further internal disturbances ot the mare. 
 Positively, it made me nervous when she but 
 twitched her ears ! 
 
 Yet, in despite of these painful memories 
 of the trials and tribulations which befell me 
 there, I think of L'Isle-sur-Sorgue only with 
 an affectionate tenderness. It possesses a 
 beautiful old church, it is renowned for the 
 excellence of its dried fruits, and there is in 
 its composition a most wonderful mingling 
 of sparkling water and sparkling sunshine. 
 These merits are considerable ; but its greater 
 merit, wherein lies its especial charm lor me, 
 is its habit of repose. I never have known a 
 town where a larger proportion of the towns- 
 folk seemed to have so coniforta1)]\- little; to 
 do. Their capacity for being negatively 
 busy — that is to say, for consciously and de- 
 liberately doing nothing: a very different
 
 112 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 thing from mere idleness — is a perfect realiza- 
 tion of a beautiful ideal. During the three 
 days of our sojourn there some masons were 
 making believe to be at work upon repairs to 
 the wall of the main canal — close beside an 
 old stone bridge whereon was cast by a great 
 plane-tree growing beside it a rest-inviting 
 shade. All day long relays of the towns- 
 people accepted the invitation of the plane- 
 tree and sat upon the parapet of the bridge, 
 watching with an intelligently languid interest 
 the masons keeping up their show of toil. 
 Sometimes the members of these self-ap- 
 pointed committees fairly went to sleep. But 
 it was only by looking closely that their som- 
 nolence was apparent — so exquisite, even in 
 their widest wakefulness, was their repose. A 
 town like that is a bulwark of civilization, 
 against which the Huns and Goths of our era, 
 whose barbaric war-cry is " Haste!" may strive 
 in vain. 
 
 VI 
 
 Salon, where dwelt of old the prophet 
 Nostradamus, lies due south of L'Isle at a 
 distance of twenty miles. But by going along
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 113 
 
 two sides of a triano-lc. onl\- thirt\' miles or so 
 out of the direct wa\-, we were able to lay a 
 course through Saint- Remy and Les Baux 
 that was much more to our minds. Our visit 
 to Salon was a matter of diplomatic neces- 
 sity — to the end that, as Ambassadors, we 
 might wait upon the chief citizen of that town : 
 Monsieur Antoine Blaise Crousillat, oldest of 
 all the Felibres, to whom his brethren have 
 eiven the affectionate title of dean of their 
 poetic guild. 
 
 Early in the morning I held a final confer- 
 ence (at the regular two-franc rate) with the 
 veterinary surgeon ; received his positive as- 
 surance that the revolt in the interior of the 
 Ponette was wholly quelled ; and by seven 
 o'clock we were on the road. We started at 
 this untoward hour partly because we ex- 
 pected to drive far that day, and partly be- 
 cause the Ponette's physician in ordinary had 
 warned us against pushing her at too great a 
 speed. LiLlh: did this nian know about her, 
 or never would he have coupled her name 
 with so vivacious a word! His counsel was 
 delivered in her presence, and she very obvi- 
 ously made a note of it for her own ])nr|)oses. 
 That day she ouldid licrscll in prodigies of 
 laziness, and wlicncxcr I xcntiircd mildly to 
 
 8
 
 114 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 remonstrate with her, she would give a warn- 
 ing quiver to her fat flanks which thrilled us 
 with alarm. She was dull, the Ponette, but 
 not stupid — oh, no! 
 
 Although the landscape may be said to 
 have clung to our chariot wheels with an af- 
 fectionate persistence, we did actually advance. 
 By nine o'clock we were in Cavaillon — a 
 bowery little town, famous in all this part of 
 France for its melons. The elder Dumas made 
 a solemn gift of his collected works to the 
 municipality of Cavaillon, on the express con- 
 dition that every year he should receive a 
 tribute of its melons ; which tribute — it was a 
 good business transaction for the novelist, for 
 in Paris the melons of Cavaillon are fruit of 
 price — was paid regularly until the contract 
 was liquidated by his death. By ten o'clock 
 we had crossed the Durance ; and a little 
 before noon we gently edged our way into 
 Saint- Remy — when the Ponette, being of a 
 gluttonous habit, suddenly snuffed at possi- 
 bilities of breakfast, and brought us almost at 
 a trot into the remise of the Hotel du Cheval 
 Blanc. 
 
 It is a delightful old tavern, this : with 
 narrow stairways of stone, crooked passages
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 115 
 
 of various levels laid in tiles, tile-paved cham- 
 bers with ancient heavy furniture, the lower 
 rooms vaulted, the dining-room fairly extend- 
 ing out into the open air under a vine-clad 
 arbor, and beyond the arbor an acre or more 
 of tanked crarden in which o-row all too'ether 
 fruit-trees and shade-trees and shrubbery and 
 vecretables and flowers. A beautiful woman, 
 in the beautiful dress of Aries, received us with 
 the most cordial ot smiles. It was as though 
 she had been waitiuLT lon^r for our cominof, 
 and was joyful because at last we had arrived. 
 And she backed in a practical fashion her dis- 
 play of hospitality by giving- us a breakfast fit 
 for the Lords of Baux. 
 
 Most gentle is the business carried on by 
 the people of Saint-Rem)-: the raising of 
 flowers and the sale of their seed. All around 
 the town are fields of flowers ; and the flowers 
 are suffered to grow to full maturity, and then 
 to die their own sw'cet death, to the end that 
 their seed may be garnered and sold abroad. 
 Everywhere delicate odors floated about us in 
 the air ; and. although our coming was in 
 August, bright colors still mingled every- 
 where with the green of lca\es and grass. 
 Insensibl)-, their gracious manner of earning
 
 Ii6 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 a livelihood has reacted upon the people 
 themselves: the folk of Saint -Remy are no- 
 table for their gentleness and kindliness even 
 among- their gentle and kindly fellows of 
 Provence. We understood better Roumanille's 
 beautiful nature when we thus came to know 
 the town of gardens wherein he was born, 
 and we also appreciated more keenly the 
 verse — in his exquisite little poem to his 
 mother — in which he chronicles his birth: 
 
 In a farm-house hidden in the midst of apple-trees, 
 On a beautiful morning in harvest-time, 
 
 I was bom to a gardener and a gardener's wife 
 In the gardens of Saint -Remy. 
 
 In Saint -Remy was born, and now dwells 
 (though we were not so fortunate, on this 
 occasion, as to encounter him), still another 
 poet : Monsieur Marius Girard, Syndic des 
 Felibres de Provence, Felibre majoral, Maitre 
 en Gai-savoir, Chevalier of the Order of 
 Charles III. of Spain — who especially is the 
 laureate of the mountains near which he lives. 
 Into his "Lis Aupiho " he has gathered the 
 many strange legends of the Alpines, and has 
 enhanced the value of his poetry by his 
 scholarly researches into the curious history
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 117 
 
 and sociology of this isolated mountain- 
 range : and so has won deservedly the crown 
 of the floral games at Apt and the olive- 
 branch of the Academy of Beziers. And, 
 final]}-, in Saint -Remy lives the present queen 
 of the h^elibres, Mademoiselle Girard, who 
 was chosen to her high office at the sep- 
 tennial festival held at Les Baux in August, 
 1892. 
 
 But the wonder is not that two poets and 
 a queen of poets have been born in Saint- 
 Remy. Rather is it that the ordinary speech 
 of every one born in this delicately delectable 
 little town is not pure iambics; that there 
 should not be poetry in every mouth (as at 
 Abdera), "like the natural notes of some 
 sweet melody which drops from it whether it 
 will or no." 
 
 VII 
 
 Ix the earl)- afternoon we went onward, by 
 a road that led up a mountain pass into the 
 ver)- heart of the Alpines, to Les Baux. A 
 red-nosed nian ga\-(; us the (l<)nl)lfiil benefit 
 r)f liis compan)' during our cxjjloralion ol the
 
 Ii8 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 ruined castle and the partly ruined town. It 
 was his custom to act as a guide, he said; and 
 he seemed to think that this exposition of his 
 own habits, without regard to what our habits 
 in the matter of guides might be, was amply 
 sufficient in the premises. But in his whole 
 vinous body there was not an atom of useful- 
 ness, either as a guide or as anything else ; 
 and his meager soul — injudiciously preserved 
 in alcohol — was quite in keeping with its 
 useless carnal environment. 
 
 There was no need for a guide. The ruins 
 spoke for themselves — a wreck so total, so 
 wild, so harsh, that upon it seemed to have 
 fallen relentlessly the withering wrath of 
 God. The few poverty-stricken souls, quarry- 
 men and their ragged families, who found 
 shelter in what remained of the houses, 
 seemed to be crushed down under the same 
 general curse. The red-nosed man officiously 
 led us to a sheer cliff, a fall of a hundred feet 
 or more, over which a woman but recently 
 had cast herself, he said, because she was so 
 miserably poor and her life was so bitter and 
 so hard. Beholding the dreary ruins amidst 
 which this sorrowful creature's home had 
 been, and hearing told with a rasping minute-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 119 
 
 ness the details of her broken-hearted Hfe, we 
 did not wonder that in a crisis of heroic 
 cowardice she had leaped out from the dark 
 certainties of that height and of Time toge- 
 ther into the luringly bright uncertainties of 
 Eternity. 
 
 It added to the desolateness of the wreck of 
 castle and town that this red-nosed abomina- 
 tion should be, as he seemed to be, the most 
 prominent citizen of the ruin of all over which 
 the Lords of Baux had reigned — glorying in 
 their descent in a right line from the young- 
 est and the bravest of the Magi ; bearing for 
 their device the sixteen-rayed star of Beth- 
 lehem ; and upholding valiantly through the 
 centuries their war-cry: " Au hazard, Bal- 
 thazar ! " 
 
 Even on that mountain height the day was 
 wanincr when at last we turned to ^o. We 
 came back to the wretched inn, and there 
 waited until the boy into whose charge I had 
 o-iven the Ponette should harness her ai^ain. 
 It was an unwise consideration for the comfort 
 of the Ponette that had led me to order the 
 harness taken off — as I perceived when that 
 utterly incompetent boy attempted to replace it. 
 Even the stolid little mare seemed to smile at
 
 I20 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 him as she turned her head and contemplated 
 his misdoings ; and the quarrymen, standing 
 about the doors of the buvette and the worse 
 for their evening drams, openly laughed. 
 The red-nosed man officiously tried to help, 
 and only got the harness more tangled. In 
 the end, I had to shove them both aside and 
 do the harnessing myself — with an inward 
 prayer that I might do it well enough to hold 
 together until we got back to Saint -Remy, 
 
 We went down the mountain road at a 
 good trot, with the brakes set hard. The 
 road was as smooth as French roads — \i2Lr- 
 r\ng che7nms d' exploitation — always are, and 
 the descent was sharp : even the Ponette 
 could not refuse to trot with the carriage 
 fairly pushing her along. Dusk was falling 
 on the heights, and darkness had come by 
 the time that we reached the plain. From the 
 unseen fields of flowers sweet scents were 
 borne to us ; sweetest of all being the richly 
 delicate odor from a field of heliotrope close 
 beside us, but hidden in the bosom of the 
 night. 
 
 Our dinner at the Cheval Blanc was served 
 to us at a small table in the arbor — lighted 
 by lamps hung from the lattice — close beside
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 121 
 
 the vine-covered arch\va\- that opened upon 
 the dark garden beyond. At another small 
 table three elderl\- men were dining, who 
 bowed to us gravely as we took our seats, 
 but who were sufficiently remote from us to 
 make an attempt at general conversation 
 unnecessary. To one of them — a pleasant- 
 lookintr old bo\-, with a mahoiranv face that 
 testified to an outdoor habit of life and to a 
 liking for honest red wine — we evidently 
 were objects of interest. We caught him 
 shooting sidelong looks at us, and he evi- 
 dently was keeping his ears wide open to our 
 English talk. They finished their dinner 
 before we had finished ours, and aerain we 
 interchanged bows as the)- rose to leave. But 
 our mahogany-faced gentleman was not quite 
 done with us. In the doorway he paused for 
 a moment, as though steadying himself for 
 some venturesome deed. Then, with another 
 bow, he said with a sharp abruptness: "Good 
 night " — and instantly disappeared ! 
 
 It was most startling to have this scrap of 
 English fired at us, at point-blank range, with 
 the unexpectedness of a thunderbolt out of a 
 clear sky. C)bviousl)-, however, the effect of 
 his deliverance was most severe upon him-
 
 122 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 self — the recoil incident to his lingual ex- 
 plosion carrying him clear out of our sight. 
 Doubtless his digestion that night was the 
 worse for his violent tampering with a foreign 
 tongue. And did we, in that single lurid 
 gleam of speech, get the benefit of his entire 
 English vocabulary ? We never knew ! 
 
 Bearing in her hands our two candles, our 
 beautiful hostess piloted us to our bed-cham- 
 ber — up the narrow worn stone stairway, 
 along the narrow crooked passages broken by 
 incidental flights of steps, and so to the large 
 tile-paved room whereof the mahogany furni- 
 ture had grown black with age, and where 
 everything was exquisitely clean. The bed- 
 linen had a faint smell of lavender, and the 
 beds were comfortable to a degree. As I 
 sank away into sleep I was aware of the 
 delicate, delicious odor of flowers swept in 
 through the open window by the soft night 
 wind. 
 
 VIII 
 
 All Saint -Remy was astir — 't was the 
 Feast of the Assumption — as we left it the
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 123 
 
 next day. The shady Place d'Armes was 
 crowded with men in blouses, who ate melons, 
 and smoked short pipes, and all the while 
 talked so vigorously that there was a buzzing 
 in the air as though of bees. The women — 
 beautiful with a stately beauty, and wearing 
 the beautiful dress of Aries — were clustered 
 in front of the church, wherein they attended 
 to tlieir religious duties in relays, and added 
 to the buzzing a sharper note with the simul- 
 taneous going of all their tongues. Every 
 moment the two gatherings were enlarged by 
 new recruits come in from the outlying farms: 
 affluent country-folk in high two-wheeled 
 carts drawn 1)y round little horses of the 
 Camargue, or less affluent country-folk who 
 came joyfully to the feast on the two legs 
 which God had given them. 
 
 Only our strong sense of duty as Ambassa- 
 dors enabled us to fetch away from Saint- 
 Remy and the glad company assembled there 
 and to go onward to Salon. As we drove off 
 through the flower-fields, and then through 
 vine)-ards and olive-orchards and plantations 
 of almond trees, the feast still was present 
 with us in the persons of th(jse whom we met 
 going to it, all gallant in their least-day
 
 124 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 clothes. Toward the end of our journey we 
 met other hohday folk returning from Salon ; 
 and then our hearts were comforted for the 
 loss of Saint -Remy by our delight in this 
 bravely castellated little city set sturdily upon 
 its hill. 
 
 Our credentials to the dean of the Felibres 
 were as slight as ever an embassy carried. 
 " He lives beside the fountain," said Rouma- 
 nille. "Tell him that you come from me." 
 That was all ! But we knew that it was suffi- 
 cient. Doubts as to our calling we never had 
 entertained ; and the welcome that had been 
 ofiven us at Avignon had convinced us that 
 our election was altogether sure. 
 
 We had ample time to present ourselves to 
 Monsieur Crousillat before dinner — it was 
 but half after five when our establishment at 
 the very comfortable Hotel des Negociants 
 was completed, and the days still were long. 
 When we asked for information in regard 
 to the whereabouts of Monsieur Crousillat's 
 home, 'Toinette, the daughter of the house — 
 plump as a little partridge and beaming with 
 smiles — instandy offered to be our guide. 
 " It is but a step," she said. " You turn the 
 corner and you are upon the boulevard — in a
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 125 
 
 moment you come to the fountain and the 
 Place d'Aubes. But were it a great deal 
 farther," she added earnest! )•, " 1 should have 
 the most of pleasure in showing m'sieu'- 
 madame the way." She was the kindest- 
 hearted little creature in the world, this ijood 
 'Toinette. The next da\' she went with us to 
 the church in which Nostradamus lies liur- 
 ied, where we encountered a crust)- sacristan 
 whose stock of merchantable civility was sold 
 in small portions at the rate of fifty centimes 
 each. The rate struck me as low; but 'Toi- 
 nette, witnessing the purchase of that which 
 bv her creed should be giwn Ireeh', was 
 sincerely shocked. ''To think," she said, 
 "of being paid for politeness! That is not 
 the wa)- in our town." And presently she 
 repeated: "No, that is not the way in our 
 town at all ! " 
 
 'Toinette's courtesy was as delicately dis- 
 criminating as it was cordial. When she had 
 led u.'^ near!) Lu Monsieur Crousillat's door 
 she left us — "because m'sieu'-madame doubt- 
 less wish to make this visit alone," she said. 
 She. could not have- exhibited a nicer con- 
 sideration had she been tlu: \(r\- linc-st lady 
 in the land.
 
 126 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 We knocked at the door of the poet's 
 house, but there was no reply ; nor was 
 there when we knocked again. Our third 
 knock brought out from a shoe-shop in the 
 adjoining house a pleasant-faced young girl, 
 who informed us that no one was at home 
 just then, and advised us to return at six 
 o'clock — when we would be sure to find 
 some one, because that was the hour at 
 which the family supped. It was with the 
 utmost good-heartedness that she spoke, 
 and with the air of one to whom the suc- 
 cess of our visit was a matter of serious 
 concern. 
 
 There is not anywhere a more delightful 
 town than Salon in which to ramble in the 
 quiet time of sunset. All the center of it — 
 the part lying about the castle, within what 
 were the limits of the ancient walls — is a 
 tangle of narrow crooked streets, which give 
 fresh combinations of picturesqueness at every 
 turn ; outside of this tightly compressed area, 
 occupying the site of walls and moat, is a 
 broad boulevard shaded by double lines of 
 trees ; and beyond the boulevard are houses 
 set more openly, between which are far views 
 out over the vast level of the Crau, or across
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 127 
 
 vineyards and oli\-c-orchards to the distant 
 hills' 
 
 So charmino- was it all that the hour was 
 nearer half after six than six when we re- 
 turned to Monsieur Crousillat's door. The 
 pleasant-faced young girl was on the look- 
 out for us, and with her was her pleasant- 
 faced mother. The mother befrgred that we 
 would not knock — "because M'sieu' An- 
 toine is at his supper, and it is not well, as 
 madame no doubt knows, to interrupt old 
 people at their meals." And then she added 
 with a frank friendliness: "Perhaps ma- 
 dame and m'sieu' will have the cfoodness to 
 seat themselves in my shop and wait for just 
 a very little while ; it certainly will not be 
 long." 
 
 They made us as welcome as though we 
 had been old friends, yet kept in \iew the fact 
 that we were distincfuished stran<jers, and 
 preened their feathers — while cooing per- 
 functory dissent — as our magnificences were 
 pleased to express an ob\iousl\- sincere ad- 
 miration for their town. Then a neighbor 
 dropped in, and took a lively part in our dish 
 of friendly talk ; and so, for half an hour, we 
 all chatted a\\a\- toirether as comforlabK- as
 
 128 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 though we had known one another through 
 the whole of our respective Hves. 
 
 IX 
 
 When, at last, we despatched the young girl 
 upon a reconnoissance. Monsieur Crousillat 
 returned with her — in a fine state of perturba- 
 tion because we had been kept waiting for so 
 long a while. He was a most sprightly old 
 gentleman, with a fresh complexion decidedly 
 at odds with his full white beard, and carried 
 jauntily his five-and- seventy years. In his 
 eagerness to make amends for our waiting, he 
 scarce gave us time to say good night to our 
 obliging friends of the shoe-shop : in a mo- 
 ment we were whisked out of it and into his 
 own home. And his cordiality was of a sort 
 that manifested itself in deeds as well as in 
 words : with what an amiable energy did he 
 lead us first to the house of Nostradamus, 
 and thereafter about the town, expound- 
 ing to us its history and its traditions, on 
 the ensuing day ! 
 
 Just within the doorway his sister was wait-
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 129 
 
 ing to welcome us — a gracious little white- 
 haired lady, with a lively yet gentle manner, 
 and with the freshness of youth still lingering 
 upon her sweet old face. With her was their 
 elder brother, to whom we were presented 
 with a certain amount of ceremony : a vigor- 
 ous young gentleman of eighty-five. There 
 was a becoming touch of gravity in his man- 
 ner ; but this seemed to be due to his respon- 
 sible position as head of the family rather than 
 to his years. It was the most charmingly 
 quaint household that can be imagined — 
 where the perpetual youth of sweet and gen- 
 tle natures had held a gallant guard upon the 
 threshold against the assaults of age. The 
 most delicate touches of all were shown in the 
 affectionate deference of the cadet and the 
 young sister toward the head of their house ; 
 and in the loving pride with which the poet 
 was regarded by his kinsfolk — this poet who 
 was their very own, united to them by the 
 closest ties of blood, yet who was on terms 
 with the Muses and had won for himself the 
 recognized right to fetch honey freely from 
 Hymettus Hill. 
 
 The poetry of Monsieur Crousillat is graver 
 in tone than is that of the majurit)' of his fel-
 
 I30 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 low Felibres. In the preface to his collection 
 of " Noels" — which work he did the Ambas- 
 sadress the honor to present to her — he has 
 written : " The main object of all poets being 
 to instruct as well as to please, I have, from 
 love of truth, though not forgetting that poe- 
 try is tinged with fiction, imposed upon my- 
 self the duty of avoiding a little what is legend 
 alone and what belongs entirely to theology. 
 And I have endeavored within the limits of 
 my power to make each of my noels teach, 
 as fables teach, a moral lesson." Yet is there 
 a strain of exceeding tenderness in his grave 
 verse, and a naive simplicity which gives it a 
 touching and peculiar charm. 
 
 He is a master of many tongues, this oldest 
 of the poets of Provence : uniting with the 
 two languages which are his birthright a 
 knowledge of Italian, gained in the course of 
 an enchanting journey into Italy in the time 
 of his youth ; an elegant Latinity, that finds 
 expression in highly finished verse ; and a 
 reading command of English. Two English 
 poets are especially dear to him : Milton and 
 Dryden. With the first of these his own ut- 
 terances, though less grandiose and more 
 humane, have something in common ; and it
 
 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 i"U 
 
 is easy to perceive how the verse of Dryden — 
 flowing, melodious, sonorous — commends it- 
 self to one whose own rich language especially 
 is suited to the composition of poetry in which 
 precisely these qualities are found. 
 
 For the lack of opportunity to train his ear 
 to its sound. Monsieur Crousillat could not 
 understand spoken English ; nor did he ven- 
 ture to speak it. He could write it, he said ; 
 and even had carried on an English corre- 
 spondence with a cousin living in our own 
 country, in Philadelphia — the daughter of a 
 refugee from France in '89. Once she had 
 come to Salon, this kinswoman, and had paid 
 them a visit. But that, he added slowly, was 
 a long, long while ago — nearly half a cen- 
 tury. After her return to America their 
 letters had sped back and forth briskly for a 
 time ; but as they had grown old the letter- 
 writing had languished ; and at last it had 
 ended — when she died. 
 
 There seemed to me to be a suggestion of 
 the delicate perfume of ashes-of-roses about 
 this episode of the American correspondence 
 that had withered and perished so long ago. 
 Later, I discovered that this was a case in 
 which my fancy had led me astra)' ; )'et am
 
 132 AN EMBASSY TO PROVENCE 
 
 I entirely confident that the welcome given 
 by the dean of the Felibres to the Embassy 
 was the warmer because America was the 
 country whence it came. 
 
 With this visit of respect to Monsieur 
 Crousillat — that changed, without our taking 
 thought about it, into a visit of affection — the 
 stately formalities of our mission were at an 
 end. As an Embassy we had presented our- 
 selves to the Capoulie, and to the Senior 
 Poet, of the Felibrige ; our credentials had 
 been approved by these high functionaries, 
 and ourselves had been accepted as personce 
 gratcB. For the remainder of our stay near 
 the Court of this Poetic Power we were en- 
 titled, as recognized Ambassadors, to receive 
 from all its subjects — and, verily, we did 
 receive — that cordial consideration which in 
 such cases the comity of nations prescribes.
 
 9/^.^<^ 
 
 / 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 253 740 5