THREE EARLY FELIBRES
Like the cats who continually move their young ones from place to place,
at the opening of the next school year my mother took me off to Monsieur
Dupuy, a native of Carpentras, who kept a school in Avignon near the
Pont-Troué. And here, in furtherance of my ambitions as a budding
Provençalist, I had indeed my “nozzle in the hay.”
Monsieur Dupuy was the brother of Charles Dupuy, a former Deputy of La
Drôme, and author of “Petit Papillons,” a delicate morsel of our modern
Provençal. Our Dupuy also tried his hand at Provençal poetry, but he did
not boast about it, and therein showed wisdom.
Shortly after my arrival, there came to the school a young professor
with a fine black beard, a native of Saint-Rémy, whose name was Joseph
Roumanille. As we were neighbours--Maillane and Saint-Rémy being in the
same canton--and our families, both of the farming class, had known each
other for years past, we were soon friends. Before long I found another
bond which drew us still closer, namely, that the young professor was
also interested in writing verses in the language of Provence.
On Sundays we went to Mass and vespers at the Carmelite church. Our
places were behind the High Altar, in the choir-stalls, and there our
young voices mingled with those of the choristers, among whom was Denis
Cassan, another Provençal poet, and one of the most popular at the
carousals of the students’ quarter. We saw him, however, clad in a
surplice, with a foolish phlegmatic air, as he intoned the responses and
psalms. The street where he lived now bears his name.
One Sunday during vespers, the idea came into my head to render in
Provençal verse the penitential psalms, so in the half-opened book I
began furtively to scribble down my version in pencil.
But Monsieur Roumanille, who was in charge, came behind me, and seizing
the paper I was writing, read it and then showed it to the headmaster,
Monsieur Dupuy. The latter, it seems, viewed the matter leniently; so
after vespers, during our walk round the ramparts, Roumanille called me
to him.
“So, my little Mistral, you amuse yourself by writing verses in
Provençal?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“Would you like me to repeat you some verses. Listen!” And then in his
deep sympathetic voice he recited to me one after another of his own
poems--“Les Deux Agneux,” “Le Petit Joseph,” “Paulon,” “Madeleine et
Louisette,” a veritable outburst of April flowers and meadow blooms,
heralds of the Félibrean spring time. Filled with delight, I listened,
feeling that here was the dawn for which my soul had been waiting to
awake to the light.
Up to that time I had only read a few stray scraps in the Provençal, and
it had always aggravated me to find that our language (Jasmin and the
Marquis de Lafare alone excepted) was usually used only in derision. But
here was Roumanille, with this splendid voice of his, expressing, in the
tongue of the people, with dignity and simplicity, all the noblest
sentiments of the heart.
Thus it came to pass that notwithstanding the difference of a dozen
years between our ages, for Roumanille was born in 1818, we clasped
hands, he happy to find a confidant quite prepared to understand his
muse, and I, trembling with joy at entering the sanctuary of my dreams;
and thus, as sons of the same God, we were united in
[Illustration: JOSEPH ROUMANILLE.]
the bonds of friendship under so happy a star that for half a century we
walked together, devoted to the same patriotic cause, without our
affection or our zeal ever knowing diminution.
Roumanille had sent his first verses to a Provençal journal,
_Boui-Abaisso_, which was published weekly at Marseilles by Joseph
Désanat, and which for the bards of the day was an admirable outlet. For
the language has never lacked exponents, and especially at the time of
the _Boui-Abaisso_ (1841-1846) there was a strong movement at Marseilles
in favour of the dialect, which, had it done nothing but promote writing
in Provençal, deserves our gratitude.
Also we must recognise that such popular poets as Désanat of Tarascon,
or Bellot Chailan, Bénédit and Gelu, pre-eminently Gelu, each of whom in
his way expressed the buoyant joyous spirit of southern Provence, have
never, in their particular line, been surpassed. Another, Camille
Reyband, a poet of Carpentras, a poet, too, of noble dimensions, in a
grand epistle he addressed to Roumanille, laments the fate of the
Provençal speech, neglected by idiots who, declares he, “Follow the
example of the gentlemen of the towns, and leave to the wise old
forefathers our unfortunate language while they render the French
tongue, which they fundamentally distort into the worst of _patois_.”
Reyband seemed to foretell the Renaissance which was then hatching when
he made this appeal to the editor of the _Boui-Abaisso_:
“Before we separate, my brothers, let us defend ourselves against
oblivion. Together let us build up a colossal edifice, some Tower of
Babel made from the bricks of Provence. At the summit, whilst singing,
engrave your names, for you, my friends, are worthy to be remembered. As
for me, whom a grain of praise intoxicates and overcomes, and who only
sings as does the cicada, and can but contribute towards your monument a
pinch of gravel and a little poor cement, I will dig for my Muse a tomb
in the sand, and when, having finished your imperishable work, you look
down, my brothers, from the height of your blue sky, you will no longer
be able to see me.”
All these gentlemen were, however, imbued with this erroneous idea that
the language of the people, good though they felt it to be, was only
suitable for common or droll subjects, and hence they took no pains
either to purify or to restore it.
Since the time of Louis XIV. the old traditions for the spelling of our
language had become almost obsolete. The poets of the meridian had,
partly through carelessness or ignorance, adopted the French spelling.
And this utterly false system cut at the root of our beautiful speech.
Every one began to carry out his own orthographical fancies, until it
reached such a point that the various dialects of the Oc language, owing
to this constant disfigurement in the writing, no longer bore any
resemblance one to another.
Roumanille, when reading the manuscripts of Saboly in the library at
Avignon, was struck by the good effect of our language when written in
the old style employed by the ancient troubadours. He wished, young as I
was, to have my help in restoring the true orthography, and in perfect
accord concerning the plan of reform, we boldly started in to moult, as
it were, and renew the skin of our language. Instinctively we felt that
for the unknown work which awaited us in the future we should need a
fine tool, a tool freshly ground. For the orthography was not all. Owing
to the imitative and middle-class spirit of prejudice, which
unfortunately is ever on the increase, many of the most gritty words of
the Provençal tongue had been discarded as vulgar, and in their place,
the poets who preceded the Félibres, even those of repute, had commonly
employed, without any critical sense, corrupt forms and bastard words
of uneducated French. Having thus determined, Roumanille and I, to write
our verses in the language of the people, we saw it was necessary to
bring out strongly the energy, freshness, and richness of expression
that characterised it, and to render the pureness of speech used in
districts untouched by extreme influences.
Even so the Roumanians, the poet Alexander tells us, when they wished to
elevate their national tongue which the _bourgeois_ class had lost or
corrupted, went to seek it out in the villages and mountains among the
primitive peasants.
In order to conform the written Provençal as much as possible to the
pronunciation in general use in Provence, we decided to suppress certain
letters or etymological finals fallen into disuse, such as the “s” of
the plural, the “t” of the particle, the “r” of the infinitive, and the
“ch” in certain words like “fach,” “dich,” “puech,” &c.
But let no one think that these innovations, though they concerned none
save a small circle of _patois_ poets, as we were then called, were
introduced into general usage without a severe struggle. From Avignon to
Marseilles, all those who wrote or rhymed in the language contested for
their routine or their fashion, and promptly took the field against the
reformers. A war of pamphlets containing envenomed articles between
these opponents and we young Avignons continued to rage for many years.
At Marseilles, the exponents of trivialities, the white-beard
rhymesters, the envious and the growlers assembled together of an
evening behind the old bookshop of the librarian Boy, there bitterly to
bewail the suppression of the “s” and sharpen their weapons against the
innovators.
Roumanille the valiant, ever ready to stand in the breech, launched
against the adversaries the Greek fire we were all diligently employed
in preparing in the crucible of the Gai-Savoir. And because we had on
our side, not only a just and good cause, but faith, enthusiasm,
youth--and something else besides--it ended in our being, as I will show
you later, victors on the field of battle.
* * * * *
But to return to the school of Monsieur Dupuy.
One afternoon we were in the courtyard, playing at “Three jumps,” when
in our midst appeared a new pupil. He was tall and well made, with a
Henri IV. nose, a hat cocked to one side, and an air of maturity
heightened by the unlit cigar in his mouth. His hands thrust in the
pockets of his short coat, he came up just as if he were one of us.
“Well, what are you after?” said he. “Would you like me to see if I can
do these three jumps?”
And without more ado, light as a cat, he took a run and went three hands
beyond the highest jump that had been touched. We clapped him, and
demanded where he had sprung from.
“From Châteauneuf,” he answered--“the country where they grow good wine.
Perhaps you have never heard of Châteauneuf, Châteauneuf-du-Pape?”
“Yes, we have. And what is your name?”
“Anselme Mathieu,” he replied.
And with these words he plunged his two hands into his pockets and
brought out a store of old cigar-ends, which he offered round with a
courteous and smiling air.
We, who for the most part had never dared to smoke (unless, indeed, as
children the roots of the mulberry-tree), thereupon regarded with great
respect this hero, who did things in so grand a manner, and was
evidently accustomed to high life.
Thus it was that I first met Mathieu, the gentle author of the
“Farandole.” On one occasion, I told this story to our friend Daudet,
who loved Mathieu, and the idea of the old ends of cigars pleased him so
much that in his romance “Jack,” he makes use of it with his little
negro prince, who performs the same act of largess.
With Roumanille and Mathieu, we were thus a trio who formed the nucleus
of those who a little later were to found the Félibrige. The gallant
Mathieu--heaven knows how he contrived it--was never seen except at the
hours of food or recreation. On account of his already grown-up air,
though not more than sixteen, and certainly backward in his studies, he
had been allowed a room on the top story under the pretext that he could
thus work more freely, and there in his attic, the walls of which he had
decorated with pictures, nude figures and plaster casts of Pradier, all
day long he dreamed and smoked, made verses, and, a good part of the
time, leant out of the window, watching the people below, or the
sparrows carrying food to their young under the eaves. Then he would
joke, rather broadly, with Mariette the chamber-maid, ogle the master’s
daughter, and, when he descended from his heights, relate to us all
sorts of gossip.
But on one subject he always took himself seriously, and that was his
patent of nobility:
“My ancestors were marquises,” he told us gravely, “Marquises of
Montredon. At the time of the Revolution, my grandfather gave up his
title, and afterwards, finding himself ruined, he would not resume it
since he could not keep it up properly.”
There was always something romantic and elusive in the existence of
Mathieu. He would disappear at times like the cats who go to Rome.
In vain we would call him: “Mathieu!”
But no Mathieu would appear. Where was he? Up there among the tiles, and
over the house-tops he would make his way to the trysts he held, so he
told us, with a girl beautiful as the day.
On one occasion, while we were all watching the procession of the
Fête-Dieu at Pont-Troué, Mathieu said to me:
“Frédéric, shall I show you my beloved?”
“Rather!” I replied promptly.
“Very well,” said he. “Now look, when the young choir-maidens pass,
shrouded in their white tulle veils, notice they will all wear a flower
pinned in the middle of their dress, but one, you will see, fair as a
thread of gold, she will wear her flower at the side.... See,” he cried
presently, “there she is!”
“Why, my dear fellow, she is a star!” I cried with enthusiasm. “How have
you managed to make a conquest of such a lovely girl?”
“I will tell you. She is the daughter of the confectioner at the
Carretterie. From time to time I went there to buy some peppermint
drops or pastry-fingers--in this way I arrived at making myself known to
the dear child, as the Marquis de Montredon, and one day when she was
alone in the shop, I said to her: ‘Beauteous maiden, if only I could
know that you are as foolish as I am, I would propose an excursion.’
“‘Where?’ she inquired.
“‘To the moon,’ I answered.
“She burst out laughing, but I continued: ‘This is how it could be done.
You, my darling, would mount to the terrace which runs along the top of
your house, just at any hour when you could or you would, and I, who lay
my heart and my fortune at your feet, would meet you, and there beneath
the sky I would cull for you the flowers of love.’
“And so it came to pass. At the top of my beloved one’s house, as in
many others, there is a platform where they dry the linen. I have
nothing to do but climb on the roof, and from gutter-spout to
gutter-spout I go to find my fair one, who there spreads or folds the
washing. Then, hand in hand, lip against lip, but always courteously as
between lady and cavalier, we are in Paradise.”
And thus it was that our Anselme, future Félibre of the Kisses, studied
his Breviary of Love, and passed his classes in gentle ease on the
house-tops of Avignon.
At the Royal College, where we attended the history classes, there was
never any question of modern politics. But Sergeant Monnier, one of our
masters, an enthusiastic Republican, could not resist taking upon
himself this instruction. During the recreation hour, he would walk up
and down the courtyard, a history of the Revolution in his hand, working
himself up as he read aloud, gesticulating, swearing, and shouting with
enthusiasm.
“Now this is fine! Listen to this! Oh, they were grand men! Camille
Desmoulins, Mirabeau, Bailly, Virgniaud, Danton, Saint-Just,
Boisset-d’Anglas! We are worms in this day, by all the gods! besides
those giants of the National Convention!”
“Oh, very grand indeed, your mock giants!” Roumanille would answer when
he happened to be there. “Cut-throats, over-throwers of the Crucifix,
unnatural monsters, ever devouring one another! Why, Bonaparte, when he
wanted them, brought them up like pigs in the market!”
And so they would attack each other until the easy-going Mathieu
appeared on the scene and made peace by causing both to join in a laugh
at some absurdity of his own.
About this time Roumanille, in order to supplement his little emolument,
had taken a post as reader in Sequin’s printing house, and, thanks to
this position, he was able to have his first volume of verses, “Les
Paquerettes,” printed there at small cost. While he corrected his
proofs, he would regale us with these poems, much to our delight.
Thus one day succeeded another in these simple and familiar
surroundings, till in the month of August 1847 I finished my studies,
and, happy as a foal released and turned out to grass, I bade farewell
to Monsieur Dupuy’s school and returned home to the farm.
* * * * *
But before leaving the pontifical city, I must say one word about the
religious pomps and shows which, in our young day, were celebrated in
high state at Avignon for a fortnight at a time. Notre Dame-de-Dom (the
cathedral), and the four parishes, Saint-Agricol, Saint-Pierre,
Saint-Didier, and Saint-Symphorien, rivalled each other in their
splendour.
So soon as the sacristan, ringing his bell, had gone along the streets
proclaiming where the Host, borne beneath the daïs, was to pass, all the
town set to work sweeping, watering, strewing green boughs, and erected
decorations. From the balconies of the rich were hung tapestries of
embroidered silks and damasks, the poor from their windows hung out
coverings of patchwork, their rugs and quilts. At the Portail-Maillanais
and in the low quarters of the city, they covered the walls with white
sheets and adorned the pavements with a litter of boxwood. Street altars
were raised at intervals, high as pyramids, adorned with candelabrums
and vases of flowers. All the people, sitting outside their houses on
chairs, awaited the procession and ate little cakes.
The young men of the mercantile and artisan classes walked about,
swaggering and eyeing the young girls, or throwing them roses as they
sat beneath the awnings, while all along the streets the scent of
incense filled the air.
At last came the procession, headed by the beadle clad all in red, and
followed by a train of white-robed virgins, the confraternities, monks
and priests, choirs and musicians, threading their way slowly to the
beating of tambourines, and one heard as they passed the low murmur of
the devout reciting their rosaries.
Then, while an impressive silence reigned everywhere, all prostrated
themselves, and the officiating priest elevated the Host beneath a
shower of yellow broom.
But one of the most striking things was the procession of Penitents,
which began after sunset by the light of torches. And especially that of
the White Penitents, wearing their cowls and cloaks, and marching past
step by step, like ghosts, carrying, some of them, small tabernacles,
others reliquaries or bearded busts, others burning perfumes, or an
enormous eye in a triangle, or a serpent twisted round a tree--one might
have imagined them to be an Indian procession of Brahmins.
These Orders dated from the time of the League and the Western Schism,
and the heads and dignitaries of these confraternities were taken from
the noblest families in Avignon. Aubanel, one of our great Félibres, was
all his life a zealous White Penitent, and, at his death, was buried in
the habit of the brotherhood.