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Janvier -
Southern Branch
of the
University of California
I
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^os Angeles
Form L 1
•DO
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This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
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(iOV 12
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. , -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/^.^<^
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