I
This water feast-day was a part of the biennial pilgrimage to the
Sainte-Estelle of the Felibrige and the Cigaliers: the two Felibrien
societies maintained in Paris by the children of the South of France.
Through twenty-three dreary months those expatriated ones exist in the
chill North; in the blessed twenty-fourth month--always in burning
August, when the melons are luscious ripe and the grapes are ripening,
when the sun they love so well is blazing his best and the whole land is
a-quiver with a thrilling stimulating heat--they go joyously southward
upon an excursion which has for its climax the great Felibrien festival:
and then, in their own gloriously hot Midi, they really live!
By a semi-right and by a large courtesy, we of America were of this gay
party. Four years earlier, as the official representatives of an
American troubadour, we had come upon an embassy to the troubadours of
Provence; and such warm relations had sprung up between ourselves and
the poets to whom we were accredited that they had ended by making us
members of their own elect body: the Society of the Felibrige--wherein
are united the troubadours of these modern times. As Felibres,
therefore, it was not merely our right but our duty to attend the
festival of the Sainte-Estelle; and our official notification in regard
to this meeting--received in New York on a chill day in the early
spring-time--announced also that we were privileged to journey on the
special steamboat chartered by our brethren of Paris for the run from
Lyons to Avignon down the Rhone.