THE RETURN TO THE FARM
I had now become a full-blown lawyer, like scores of others, and, as you
may have remarked, I did not overwork myself! Proud as a young bird that
has found a worm, I returned home, arriving just at the hour of supper,
which was being served on the stone table in the open, under the vine
trellis, by the last rays of the setting sun.
“Good evening, everybody!” I cried.
“God bless you, Frédéric.”
“Father, mother, it is all right!” I announced, “and I have really
finished this time!”
“Well, that is a good job!” cried Madeleine, the young Piedmontaise, who
served at table.
Then, still standing, and before all the labourers, I gave an account of
my last undertaking. As I finished, my venerable father remarked:
“Well, my boy, I have now done my duty by you. You have had much more
schooling than I ever had. It is now for you to choose the road that
suits you--I leave you free.”
“Hearty thanks, my father,” I answered.
And then and there--at that time I was one and twenty--with my foot on
the threshold of the paternal home, and my eyes looking towards the
Alpilles, I formed the resolution, first, to raise and revivify in
Provence the sentiment of race that I saw being annihilated by the false
and unnatural education of all the schools; secondly, to promote that
resurrection by the restoration of the native and historic language of
the country, against which the schools waged war to the death; and
lastly, to make that language popular by illuminating it with the divine
flame of poetry.
All these ideas hummed vaguely in my soul. This eddying and surging of
the Provençal sap filled my being, and, free from all conventional
literary influences, strong in the independence which gave me wings, and
assured that nothing could now deter me, the sight of the labourers one
evening, singing as they followed the plough in the furrow, inspired me
with the opening song of _Mireille_.
This poem, the child of love, was peaceably and leisurely brought to
birth under the influence of the warm golden sunshine and the breath of
the wide sweeping winds of Provence. At the same time I took over the
charge of the farm, under the direction of my father, who, at eighty
years of age, had become blind. It was a life well suited to me, and
this was all I cared for--to be happy in my home and with certain chosen
friends. We were indifferent to Paris in those days of innocence. My
highest ambition was that Arles, which rose ever on my horizon as did
Mantua on that of Virgil, should one day recognise my poetry as her own.
Thus, thinking only of the country people of the Crau and the Camargue,
I could truly say in _Mireille_:
“We sing but for you, shepherds and people of the farms.”
I had no definite plan in commencing _Mireille_, except the broad lines
of a love-story between two beautiful children of Provence, both with
the temperament of their country though of different ranks in life, and
to let the ball roll in the unpremeditated way that happens in real
life, apparently at the pleasure of the winds.
Mireille, the happy name which breathes its own poetry, was destined to
be that of my heroine, for I had heard it in our home from my cradle,
though nowhere else.
When old Nanon, my maternal grandmother, wished to compliment one of her
daughters she would say:
“That is Mireille, the beautiful Mireille of my heart!”
And my mother in fun would say sometimes of a young girl:
“There, do you see her? That is the Mireille of my heart.”
But when I questioned concerning Mireille, no one could tell me
anything; hers was a lost history of which nothing remained but the name
of the heroine, and a gleam of beauty lost in a mist of love. It was
enough, however, to bring good fortune to a poem, which perhaps--who can
tell?--was the reconstruction of a true romance, revealed through the
intuition granted to the poet.
The Judge’s Farm was at this time the best of all soils for the growth
of idyllic poetry. Was not this epic of Provence, with its background of
blue and its frame of the Alpilles, living and singing around me? Did I
not see Mireille passing, not only in my dreams of a young man, but also
in actual person? Now in the sweet village maidens who came to gather
mulberry leaves for the silk-worms, now in the charming white-coifed
haymakers, gleaners and reapers who came and went through the corn, the
hay, the olives and the vines.
And the actors of my drama, my labourers, harvesters, cowherds and
shepherds, did they not gladden my eyes from early morn till eve? Could
one possibly find a grander prototype for my Master Ramon than the
patriarch François Mistral, he whom all the world, even my mother,
called “The Master”? My dear father! Sometimes, when the work was
pressing and help was needed, either for the hay or to draw water from
the well, he would call out, “Where is Frédéric?” Perhaps at that moment
I had crept away under a sheltering willow in pursuit of some flying
rhyme, and my poor mother would answer:
“He is writing.”
And at once the stern voice of the good man would soften as he said:
“Then do not disturb him.”
For, having himself read nothing but the Scriptures and “Don Quixote,”
writing in his eyes appeared a sort of religious exercise.
This respect of the unlettered for the mystery of the pen is very well
shown in the opening of one of our popular legends:
Monseigneur Saint-Anselme was learned and wise,
One day, by his writing, he rose to the skies, &c.
Another person who, without knowing it, influenced my epic muse was our
old cousin Tourette, from the village of Mouriès; a sort of colossus,
strong of limb but lame, with great leather gaiters over his boots; he
was known in all that part as “The Major,” having, in 1815, served as
drum-major in the National Guards, under the command of the Duc
d’Angoulême, he who wished to arrest Napoleon on his return from the
Isle of Elba. “The Major” had, in his youth, dissipated his fortune by
gambling, and in his old age, reduced to poverty, he came, every winter,
to pass some time with us at the farm. On his departure, my father
always saw that he took with him some bushels of corn. During the summer
time he travelled over the Crau and the Camargue, now helping the
shepherds to shear the sheep, now the mowers of the marshes to bind the
rushes, or the salters to collect and heap up the salt. Certainly no one
could equal him in knowledge of the country of Arles and its work. He
knew the names of every farm, and every pasture, of the head shepherds,
and of each stud of horses or of wild bulls. And he talked of it all
with an eloquence, a picturesqueness, a richness of Provençal expression
which it was a pleasure to hear. Describing, for instance, the Comte de
Mailly as very rich in house property, he would say: “He possesses seven
acres of roofing.”
The girls who were engaged for the olive gathering at Mouriès would
hire him to tell them stories in the evenings. They gave him, I think,
each one, a halfpenny for the evening. He kept them in fits of laughter,
for he knew all the stories, more or less humorous, that from one to
another were transmitted among the people, such as “Jean de la Vache,”
“Jean de la Mule,” “Jean de l’Ours,” “Le Doreur,” &c.
Directly the snow began to fall we knew “The Major” would soon make his
appearance. And he never failed.
“Good-day, cousin.”
“Cousin, good-day.”
And there he was. His hand shaken and his stick deposited, unobtrusively
he took up his accustomed seat in his corner, and, while eating a good
slice of bread and butter and cheese, he would give us the news.
Cousin Tourette being, like most dreamers, a bit of an idler, had all
his life dreamt of a remunerative post where there would be very little
work.
“I should like,” he told us, “the situation of reckoner of cod-fish. At
Marseilles, for instance, in one of those big shops where they unload, a
man can, while seated, earn, so I am told, by counting the fish in
dozens, his twelve hundred francs a year!”
Poor old Major! He died, like many another, without having realised his
cod-fish dream.
I can never forget either, among those who helped me to make the poetry
of _Mireille_, the woodcutter Siboul, a fine fellow from Montfrin, in a
suit of velvet, who came every year towards the end of the autumn with
his great billhook to trim our undergrowth of willow. While he worked
away busily, what shrewd observations he would make to me about the
Rhône, its currents, eddies, lagoons and bays, the soil and the islands!
Also about the animals that frequented the dikes, the otters that lodged
in the hollow trees, the beavers who work as deftly as woodcutters, the
birds who suspend their nests from the white poplars, besides endless
stories of the osier-cutters and basket-makers of Vallabrèque and that
district.
My chief instructor, however, in the botany of Provence was our
neighbour Xavier, a peasant herbalist, who told me the Provençal names
and virtues of all the simples and herbs of Saint-Jean and of
Saint-Roch. And thus I collected such a good store of botanical
knowledge that, without wishing to speak slightingly of the learned
professors of our schools, either high or low, I believe those gentlemen
would have found it difficult to pass the examination I could, for
instance, on the subject of thistles.
Suddenly, like a bomb, during this quiet, growing time of my _Mireille_,
burst the news of the Revolution of December 2, 1851.
I had never been one of those fanatics to whom the Republic meant
religion, country, justice--everything; and the Jacobites, by their
intolerance, their mania for levelling, their hardness, brutality and
materialism, had disgusted and wounded me more than once, and now the
action of the Government in uprooting the very law to which they had
sworn fidelity, filled me with indignation, and dissipated once and for
all any illusions about those future federations which I had once hoped
would be the outcome of a Republic of France.
Some of my colleagues from the Law School placed themselves at the head
of the insurgent bands who were raised in Le Var in the name of the
Constitution; but the greater number, in Provence as elsewhere, some
disgusted by the turbulence of the opposing party, others dazzled by the
brilliance of the first Empire, applauded the change of Government. Who
could have foretold that the new Empire would tumble to pieces as it
did, in a terrible war and national wreck?
So it came to pass that I abandoned, once and for all, inflammatory
politics, even as one casts off a burden on the road in order to walk
more lightly, and from henceforth I gave myself up entirely to my
country and my art--my Provence, from whom I had never received aught
but pure joy.
One evening, about this time, withdrawn in contemplation, roaming in
quest of my rhymes,--for I have always found my verses by the highways
and byways--I met an old man tending his sheep. It was the worthy Jean,
a character well known to me. The sky was covered with stars, the
screech-owl hooted, and the following dialogue took place:
“You have wandered far, Mister Frédéric,” began the shepherd.
“I am taking a little air, Master Jean,” I answered.
“You are going for a turn among the stars?”
“Master Jean, you have said it. I am so heartily sick, disillusioned and
disheartened with the things of earth, that I wish to-night to ascend
and lose myself in the kingdom of the stars.”
“Well, I myself,” said he, “make an excursion there nearly every night,
and I assure you the journey is one of the most beautiful.”
“But how does one manage to find one’s way in that unfathomable depth of
light?”
“If you would like to follow me, sir, while the sheep eat, I will guide
you gently and show you all.”
“Worthy Jean, I take you at your word,” I readily agreed.
“Now, let us mount by that road which shows all white from north to
south: it is the road of Saint-Jacques. It goes from France straight
over to Spain. When the Emperor Charlemagne made war with the Saracens,
the great Saint-Jacques of Galice marked it out before him to show him
the way.”
“It is what the pagans called the Milky Way,” I observed.
“Possibly,” he replied with indifference. “I tell you what I have always
heard. Now, do you see that fine chariot with its four wheels which
dazzles all the north? That is the Chariot of the Souls. The three stars
which precede it are the three beasts of the team, and the small star
which is near the third is named the Charioteer.”
“They are what the books call the Great Bear.”
“As you please--but look, look, all around are falling stars--they are
the poor souls who have just entered Paradise. Make the sign of the
Cross, Mister Frédéric.”
“Beautiful angels, may God be with you!”
“But see,” he went on, “a fine star shining there, not far from the
chariot. It is the drover of the skies.”
“Which in astronomy they call Arcturus.”
“That is of no importance. Now look over there in the north at the star
which scarcely scintillates: that is the seaman’s star, otherwise called
the Tramontane. She is nearly always visible, and serves as a signal to
sailors, they think themselves lost if they lose the Tramontane.”
“Also called the Polar Star,” said I; “it is found in the Little Bear,
and as the north wind comes from there, the sailors of Provence, like
those of Italy, say they are going to the Bear when they go against that
wind.”
“Now turn your head,” said the shepherd, “you will see the Chicken-coop
twinkling, or, if you like it better, the Brood of Chickens.”
“Which the learned have named the Pleiades, and the Gascon, the Dog’s
Cart.”
“That’s so,” he allowed. “A little lower shine the Signalmen, specially
appointed to mark the hours for the shepherds. Some call them the ‘Three
Kings,’ others the ‘Three Bells.’”
“Just so, it is Orion and his Belt.”
“Very well,” conceded my friend, “now still lower, always towards the
meridian, shines Jean de Milan.”
“Sirius, if I mistake not.”
“Jean de Milan is the torch of the stars,” he continued. “Jean de Milan
had been invited one day, with the Signalmen and the Young Chicken, so
they say, to a wedding, the wedding of the beautiful Maguelone, of whom
we will speak again. The Young Chicken set out, it appears, early, and
took the high road. The Signalmen, having taken a lower cut, at last
arrived there also. Jean de Milan slept on, and when he rose took a
short cut, and to stop them, threw his stick flying in the air--which
caused them to be called ever since, by some people, the Stick of Jean
de Milan.”
“And that one, far away, which is just showing its nose above the
mountain?” I inquired.
“That is the Cripple,” he replied. “He also was asked to the wedding,
but as he limps, poor devil, he goes but slowly. Also, he gets up late
and goes to bed early.”
“And that one going down, over there, in the west, and shining like a
bride?” I asked.
“Ah, that is our own--the Shepherds’ Star, the Star of the Morning,
which lights us at dawn when we unfold the sheep, and at sundown when we
drive them in. That is she, the Queen of stars, the beautiful star,
Maguelone, the lovely Maguelone, pursued unceasingly by Pierre de
Provence, with whom, every seven years, takes place her marriage.”
“The conjunction, I believe, of Venus and Jupiter, or occasionally of
Saturn.”
“According to taste,” replied my guide--“but, hist, Labrit! Oh, the
rascally dog, the scoundrel! Whilst we talk, the sheep have scattered.
Hist, bring them back! I must go myself. Good evening, Mister Frédéric,
take care you do not lose yourself.”
“Good-night, friend Jean.”
Let us, also, return, like the shepherd, to our sheep.
About this time, in a publication called _Les Provençales_, to which
many Provençal writers, old and young, contributed, I and other of the
younger poets engaged in a correspondence on the subject of the language
and of our productions. The result of these discussions, which became
extremely animated, was the idea of a Conference of Provençal poets. And
under the directorship of Roumanille and of Gaut, both of whom had been
contributors to the journal _Lou Boui-Abaisse_, the first meeting was
held on August 29, 1852, at Arles, in a room in the ancient
archbishop’s palace, under the presidency of Doctor d’Astros, oldest
member of the Bards. Here we all met and made acquaintance, Aubanel,
Aubert, Bourelly, Cassan, Crousillat, Désanet, Garcin, Gaut, Gelu,
Mathieu, Roumanille, myself and others. Thanks to the good
Carpentrassian, Bonaventure Laurent, our portraits had the honour of
being in _L’Illustration_ (September 18, 1852).
Roumanille, when inviting Monsieur Moquin-Tandon, professor of the
Faculty of Science at Toulouse, and a gifted poet in his tongue of
Montpellier, had begged him to bring Jasmin to Arles. But the author of
“Marthe la folle,” the illustrious poet of Gascony, answered the
invitation of Moquin-Tandon: “Since you are going to Arles, tell them
they may gather together in forties and in hundreds, but they will never
make the noise that I have made quite alone!”
“That is Jasmin from head to foot!” Roumanille said to me. “That reply
reproduces him much more faithfully than does the bronze statue raised
at Agen in his honour.”
In short, the hairdresser of Agen, in spite of his genius, was always
somewhat surly with those who, like himself, wished to sing in our
tongue. Roumanille, since we are on the subject, some years previously,
had sent him his “Pâquerettes,” dedicating to him “Madeleine,” one of
the best poems of the collection. Jasmin did not even deign to thank
him. But in 1848, when the Gascon passed through Avignon, on the
occasion of his assisting at a concert given by the harpist,
Mademoiselle Roaldes, Roumanille and several others went to offer their
respects afterwards to the poet, who had made tears flow as he recited
his “Souvenirs.”
“Who are you then?” asked Jasmin of the poet of Saint-Rémy.
“One of your admirers, Joseph Roumanille.”
“Roumanille!--I remember that name. But I thought it belonged to a dead
author.”
“Monsieur, as you see,” answered the author of the ‘Pâquerettes,’ who
never allowed any one to tread on his toes, “I am young enough, if it
please God, some day to write your epitaph.”
One who was much more gracious to our Congress at Arles was the good
Reboul, who wrote to us thus: “May God bless you. May your fights be
feasts, your rivals, friends! He who created the skies made those of our
country so wide and so blue that there is room for all stars.”
Jules Canonge of Nîmes also wrote to us: “My friends, if you have to
battle one day for your cause, remember it was at Arles that you held
your first meeting, and that your torch was lit in the proud and noble
city which has for arms and for motto, ‘The sword and the wrath of the
lion.’”
The Congress at Arles had succeeded too well not to be renewed. The
following year, on August 21, 1853, at the suggestion of Gaut, the
jovial poet of Aix, an assembly was held at that city. This “Festival of
the Bards,” was twice as large as that held at Arles. It was on this
occasion that Brizeux, the grand bard of Brittany, addressed to us his
greetings and his wishes:
With olive branches shall your heads be crowned;
Only the moors have I, where sad flowers blow:
The one, a sign of peace and joyous round;
The other, but a symbol of our woe.
Let us unite them, friends. Our sons henceforth
Shall wear these flowers upon their brow no more,
Nor sound th’ entrancing songs of our dear North,
When we, the faithful few, have gone before.
Yet, can it die, the fresh and gentle breeze?
The storm-winds bear it hence upon their wing,
But it comes back to kiss the mossy leas.
Can the song die the nightingale did sing?
Nay, nay: our glorious speech in its decline,
O fair Provence, thou wilt restore and save!
Thro’ long years yet that errant voice of thine
Shall sigh, O Merlin, whispering o’er my grave!
Besides those I have mentioned as figuring at the Congress of Arles,
here are the new names that appeared at the Congress of Aix: Léon
Alègre, the Abbé Aubert, Autheman Bellot, Brunet, Chalvet, the Abbé
Lambert, Lejourdan, Peyrottes, Ricard-Bérard, Tavan, Vidal, &c., and
three poetesses, Mesdemoiselles Reine Garde, Léonide Constans, and
Hortense Rolland.
A literary _séance_ was held after lunch in the Town Hall, before all
the grand world of Aix. The big hall was courteously decorated with the
colours of Provence and the arms of all the Provençal towns, and on a
banner of crimson velvet were inscribed the names of the principal
Provençal poets of the last century.
The Mayor of Aix, who also held the post of deputy, was at that time
Monsieur Rigaud, the same who later made a translation of “Mirèio” into
French verse.
After the overture, sung by a choir to the words of Jean-Batiste, and
beginning:
Troubadours of Provence
For us this day is glorious.
Behold the glad Renaissance
Of the language of the South!
the President d’Astros discoursed delightfully in Provençal, and then,
in turn, each poet contributed some piece of his own.
Roumanille, much applauded, recited one of his tales, and sang “La Jeune
Aveugle;” Aubanel gave us “Des Jumeaux,” and I the “Fin du Moissonneur.”
But the greatest successes were produced by the song of the peasant
Tavan, “Les Frisons de Mariette,” and the recitation of the mason
Lacroix, who made us all shiver with his “Pauvre Martine.”
Emile Zola, then a scholar at the College of Aix, was present at this
meeting, and forty years afterwards this is what he said in the
discourse he gave at the Felibrée of Sceaux (1892):
“I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and I can see myself as a
school-boy escaping from college in order to be present in the great
room of the Town Hall at Aix at a poets’ fête, somewhat resembling the
one I have the honour to preside over to-day. Mistral was there,
declaiming his ‘Fin du Moissonneur’; Roumanille and Aubanel also, and
many others who, a few years later, were to be the ‘Félibres’ and who
were then but ‘Troubadours.’ At the banquet that night we had the
pleasure of raising our glasses to the health of old Bellot, who had
made a great name, not only in Marseilles but throughout Provence, as a
comic poet, and who, overcome at seeing this outburst of patriotic
enthusiasm, replied to us somewhat sadly:
“‘I am but a bungler. In my poor life I have blackened much paper. But
Gaut, Mistral, Crousillat, they who have the fire of youth, will unwind
the tangled skein of our Provençal tongue.’”