Such, madam, is the story of the man with the golden brain.
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Despite it's air of fantasy, this story is true from start to finish…. Throughout the world there are unfortunate people who are condemned to live by their brains, and pay in that finest of gold, blood and sweat and tears, for the least thing in life. It brings them pain every day, and then, once they tire of their suffering….
THE POET, FREDERIC MISTRAL
Last Sunday, I thought I had woken up in Montmartre. It was raining, the sky was grey, and the windmill was a miserable place to be. I dreaded staying in on such a cold, rainy day, and I felt the urge to go and cheer myself up in the company of Frédéric Mistral, the great poet who lives a few kilometres from my precious pines, in the small village of Maillane.
No sooner said than gone; my myrtle walking stick, my book of
Montaigne, a blanket, and off I went!
The fields were deserted…. Our beautiful catholic Provence gives the very earth itself a day of rest on Sundays…. The dogs are abandoned in the houses, and the farms are closed…. Here and there, was a carter's wagon with its dripping tarpaulin, an old hooded woman in a mantle like a dead leaf, mules dressed up for a gala, covered in blue and white esparto, red pompoms, and silver bells, jogging along with a cart-load of folks from the farm going to mass. Further on, there was a small boat on the irrigation canal with a fisherman casting his net from it….
There was no possibility of reading as I walked. The rain came down in bucketsful, which the tramontana then obligingly threw in your face…. I walked non-stop and after three hours I reached the small cypress woods which surround the district of Maillane and shelter it from the frightful wind.
Nothing was stirring in the village streets; everybody was at high mass. As I passed in front of the church, I heard a serpent playing, and I saw candles shining through the stained glass windows. The poet's home is on the far side of the village; it's the last house on the left, on the road to Saint-Remy—it's a small single-storey house with a front garden…. I went in quietly … and saw no one. The dining room door was shut, but I could hear someone walking about and speaking loudly behind it … a voice and a step that I knew only too well….
I paused in the whitewashed corridor, with my hand on the doorknob, and feeling very emotional. My heart was thumping.—He's in. He's working. Should I wait. Wait till he's finished…. What the hell. It can't be helped. I went in.