* * * * *
After supper, and too tired to keep going, we went into Mistral's modest peasant's bedroom, with two double beds. The walls are bare, and the ceiling beams are visible…. Four years ago, after the academy had given the author of Mireille a prize worth three thousand francs, Madame Mistral had an idea:
—Why don't we wallpaper your bedroom and put a ceiling in? she said to her son.
—Oh, no! replied Mistral…. That's poet's money that is, and not to be touched.
And so the bedroom stayed strictly bare; but as long as the poet's money lasted, anyone needy, knocking on Mistral's door, has always found his purse open….
I had brought the notebook with Calendal into the bedroom to read to myself a passage of it before going to sleep. Mistral chose the episode about the pottery. Here it is, in brief:
It is during a meal, somewhere or another. A magnificent Moustier's crockery service is brought out and placed onto the table. At the bottom of every plate, there is a Provencal scene, painted in blue on the enamel. The whole history of the land is represented on them. Each plate of this beautiful crockery has its own verse and the love in those descriptions just has to be seen. There are just so many simple but clever little poems, done with all the charm of the rural idylls of Theocritus.
Whilst Mistral spoke his verses in this beautiful Provencal tongue, more than three quarters Latin, and once spoken by queens, and now only understood by shepherds, I was admiring this man, and considering the ruinous state in which he found his mother tongue and what he had done with it. I was also imagining one of those old palaces of the Princes of Baux which can be seen in the Alpilles: there were no more roofs, no stepped balustrades, no glass in the windows; the trefoils broken in the ribbed vaults, and the coats of arms on the doors were eaten away and covered in moss. Chickens were scratching around in the main courtyard, pigs were wallowing under the fine columned galleries, an ass was grazing in the chapel overgrown with grass, and pigeons were drinking from the huge rain-water filled fonts. Finally, amongst the rubble, two or three peasant families had built huts for themselves against the walls of the old palace.
Then, one fine day, the son of one the peasants, develops a great passion for the grand ruins and is indignant to see them thus profaned. Quickly, he chases the livestock out of the courtyard and the muses come to help. He rebuilds the great staircase on his own, replaces the wood panelling on the walls, the glass in the windows, rebuilds the towers, re-gilds the throne room, and puts the one-time immense palace, where Popes and Emperors stayed, back on its pediments.
This restored palace: the Provencal language.