Monsieur Dupuy was the brother of Charles Dupuy, a former Deputy of La Drôme, and author of “Petit Papillons,” a delicate morsel of our modern Provençal. Our Dupuy also tried his hand at Provençal poetry, but he did not boast about it, and therein showed wisdom.
Shortly after my arrival, there came to the school a young professor with a fine black beard, a native of Saint-Rémy, whose name was Joseph Roumanille. As we were neighbours—Maillane and Saint-Rémy being in the same canton—and our families, both of the farming class, had known each other for years past, we were soon friends. Before long I found another bond which drew us still closer, namely, that the young professor was also interested in writing verses in the language of Provence.
On Sundays we went to Mass and vespers at the Carmelite church. Our places were behind the High Altar, in the choir-stalls, and there our young voices mingled with those of the choristers, among whom was Denis Cassan, another Provençal poet, and one of the most popular at the carousals of the students’ quarter. We saw him, however, clad in a surplice, with a foolish phlegmatic air, as he intoned the responses and psalms. The street where he lived now bears his name.
One Sunday during vespers, the idea came into my head to render in Provençal verse the penitential psalms, so in the half-opened book I began furtively to scribble down my version in pencil.
But Monsieur Roumanille, who was in charge, came behind me, and seizing the paper I was writing, read it and then showed it to the headmaster, Monsieur Dupuy. The latter, it seems, viewed the matter leniently; so after vespers, during our walk round the ramparts, Roumanille called me to him.
“So, my little Mistral, you amuse yourself by writing verses in Provençal?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“Would you like me to repeat you some verses. Listen!” And then in his deep sympathetic voice he recited to me one after another of his own poems—“Les Deux Agneux,” “Le Petit Joseph,” “Paulon,” “Madeleine et Louisette,” a veritable outburst of April flowers and meadow blooms, heralds of the Félibrean spring time. Filled with delight, I listened, feeling that here was the dawn for which my soul had been waiting to awake to the light.
Up to that time I had only read a few stray scraps in the Provençal, and it had always aggravated me to find that our language (Jasmin and the Marquis de Lafare alone excepted) was usually used only in derision. But here was Roumanille, with this splendid voice of his, expressing, in the tongue of the people, with dignity and simplicity, all the noblest sentiments of the heart.
Thus it came to pass that notwithstanding the difference of a dozen years between our ages, for Roumanille was born in 1818, we clasped hands, he happy to find a confidant quite prepared to understand his muse, and I, trembling with joy at entering the sanctuary of my dreams; and thus, as sons of the same God, we were united in