IV
“Sur le pont d’Avignon
Tout le monde danse, danse;
Sur le pont d’Avignon
Tout le monde danse en rond.”
Many generations of children have doubtless wondered why. Make an effort to cross the Rhone when the wind is blowing, and you will arrive, at any rate, at one explanation. O masterly wind! Vent magistral, or mistral. With what a round, boisterous, over-mastering force you blow from the north-west! How you send the poor passengers of Avignon-bridge whirling in all directions, dancing to all tunes, battling comically and ineffectually against you! Men used to say that beautiful Provence were a Paradise, had it not suffered from three scourges: the Parliament, the Durance and the Mistral. The local Parliament exists no more (and we regret it), the Durance is no longer a curse, but a blessing, and serves to irrigate a thousand parched and fruitful southern fields. But the mistral remains. We ourselves were nearly blown from the hill-top at Villeneuve; yet I can cherish no rancour against the mistral, the tyrant, who sweeps us all out of his way as he rushes, wreathed in dust, towards the sea. ’Tis a good honest wind, like our west-country sou’-wester, and quite devoid of the sharp, thin, exasperating quality of the east wind of our isles. And, but for the mistral, they never would have planted those dark long screens of soaring cypress which streak so picturesquely the wide blue prospects of Provence.
V
There is something Athenian in the little literary class of Avignon, and in the evident pride and joy which all the citizens take in it. Our cabman stopped us in the street: “Look at that monsieur! Look at him. He’s a poet!” cried the good man in great excitement. It was M. Félix Gras. People waylay you to point out the name of Aubanel or Roumanille written over a bookshop. Every person of every degree treasures some little speech or anecdote concerning M. Mistral, the hero of the place. Doubtless the Félibrige, with the little extra romance and importance which it has given to the South, has much to do with this literary enthusiasm. In Provence, a taste for poetry is a form of patriotism, even as it was in Ireland in the days of the “Spirit of the Nation”—as it is again to-day. The sentiment, which is pretty and touching, appears quite genuine.
We had forgotten that Roumanille was dead (as was natural, since poets never die), and so we made a pilgrimage to his bookshop. We were greeted by a dark-eyed little lady; when we asked for the poet, the tears started into her fine black eyes, and we realized, with a tightening of the heart, the cruel carelessness of our question. But Mademoiselle Roumanille (for it was she), with the beautiful courtesy of her nation, would not let us depart in this unhappy mood. She talked sweetly and seriously of her brother’s latter days and of his death-bed, cheerful and courageous as the last pages of the “Phædo”: these Provençal poets have a classic temper in their souls! He would not let them wear a mournful face. “Life is a good thing,” said he; “chequered, no doubt, with melancholy moments, but none the less bright and excellent as a whole. We have come now to one of these melancholy passages, but, believe me, my friends, the sadness of death is greatly overrated! There is nothing cruel or tragic to lament about. Life has been very good, and now—at the end of it—death comes in its place, not unkind.”
So the good Félibre passed away, mindful, no doubt, of that passage in one of his poems where he says—but I have forgotten the words—
“Now let me depart in peace,
For I have planted in Provence
A tree that shall endure.”
If even the gay, the cordial Roumanille gave out at the last this savour of antique philosophy, the likeness of Mistral to the elder poets is far more striking. He is the Provençal Theocritus, and his poems, with their delightful literalness of touch, their unforced picturesqueness and natural simplicity, will probably endure when more striking monuments of our nineteenth-century literature are less read than remembered. We cannot imagine, at any distance of time, a Provence in which some posy of Mistral’s verses will not be treasured. He will be to the great province what Joachim du Bellay has been to Anjou. True, he has written too much, but posterity is an excellent editor, and reduces the most voluminous among us to a compendious handful. Mistral is the greatest of the Félibres, and perhaps the only one whose works will survive the charming Davidsbund of poets and patriots which so loudly fills the public ear to-day.
We went more than once to see the great man in his garden at Maillane, a pleasant place surrounding a cool, quiet villa, where the poet lives with his young wife. It is the only house of any pretensions in Maillane, and to the good people of the commune Monsieur Mistral is both the poet and the squire. He comes out to receive you—a strikingly handsome man with a beautiful voice; so much like the once-famous Buffalo Bill in his appearance that one day, when the two celebrities met by accident in a Parisian café, they stared at each other, bewildered for one moment, and then, rising, each advanced towards the other and shook hands! We talked of many things, and among others, of course, of Félibrige. I ventured to ask him the meaning of the name, which is a puzzle not to philologists alone. He confessed that it had no particular meaning; that on that day in May, in 1854, when he and Roumanille and the other five discussed their projected Provençal renaissance, one of them reminded the others of a quaint old song, still sung in out-of-the-way Provençal villages: a canticle in honour of certain prophets or wise men dimly spoken of as