I wish to record here a very singular fact of maternal intuition. I had given to my mother a copy of Mirèio, but without having spoken to her of Lamartine’s opinion, of which I was still ignorant. At the end of the day, when I thought she had made acquaintance with the work, I asked her what she thought of it, and she answered me, deeply moved:
“A very strange thing happened to me when I opened thy book: a flash of light, like a star, dazzled me suddenly, and I was obliged to delay the reading until later!”
One may believe it or no, but I have always thought that this vision of my beloved and sainted mother was a very real sign of the influence of Sainte-Estelle, otherwise of the star that had presided at the foundation of Félibrige.
The fortieth discourse of the “Cours familier de Littérature” appeared a month later (1859) under the title of “The Appearance of an Epic Poem in Provence.” Lamartine devoted eighty pages to the poem of Mireille, and this glorification was the crowning event of the numberless articles which had welcomed the rustic epic in the press of Provence, of Languedoc, and of Paris. I testified my gratitude in the Provençal quatrain, which I inscribed at the head of the second edition.
TO LAMARTINE.
To thee alone Mireille I dedicate;
My heart, my soul, my flower, the best of me,
A bunch of Crau’s sweet grapes and leaves, that late
A peasant offers thee.
September 8, 1859.
And the following is the elegy that I published on the death of the great man, ten years later (1869).
ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF LAMARTINE.[18]
When the day-star draws near to the hour of his setting,
When dusk clothes the hills, and the shepherds are letting
Their sheep and their herds and their dogs go free,
Then up from the marshlands, all groaning together,
Come the wails of the toilers through sweltering weather:
“That sunshine was nearly the death of me!”