“De l’abbaye passant les portes
Autour de moi, tu trouverais
Des nonnes l’errante cohorte
Car en suaire je serais!”
“O Magali, si tu te fais
La pauvre morte
La terre alors je me ferais
Là je t’aurai!”
After which we all shook hands with Master Gafet and made our way quickly to the railway station, there to take the train for Avignon.
Seven years later, the year, alas! of the great catastrophe, I received this letter:
“Paris, December 31, 1870.
“My Chieftain,—I send thee, by the balloon just rising, a heap of kisses. And it gives me pleasure to be able to send them in the language of Provence, for so I am assured that the Barbarians, should this balloon fall into their hands, cannot read a word of my writing, nor publish my letter in their Mercure de Souabe. It is cold, it is dark: we eat horse, cat, camel, and hippopotamus! Ah, for the good onions, the catigot, and fermented cheese of the tavern of Trinquetaille!
“The guns burn our fingers. Wood is becoming scarce. The armies of the Loire come not! But that does not matter—we will keep the cockroaches from Berlin wearing themselves out for some time yet in front of our ramparts.... And then if Paris is lost, I know of some good patriots who are ready to take Monsieur de Bismarck round the little streets of our poor capital. Farewell, my chief—three big kisses, one from me, one from my wife, and the other from my son. With that a happy New Year as always, until this day next year. Thy Félibre,
“Alphonse Daudet.”
And then they dare to say that Daudet is not a good Provençal! Just because he jokes and ridicules the Tartarins, the Roumestans, and Tante Portals, and other imbeciles of this country, who try to Frenchify the language of our Provence. For that Tartarin owes him a grudge!
No! The mother lioness is not angry, and will never be angry, with the young lion who, in fighting, sometimes gives her a scratch.