Roumanille, when reading the manuscripts of Saboly in the library at Avignon, was struck by the good effect of our language when written in the old style employed by the ancient troubadours. He wished, young as I was, to have my help in restoring the true orthography, and in perfect accord concerning the plan of reform, we boldly started in to moult, as it were, and renew the skin of our language. Instinctively we felt that for the unknown work which awaited us in the future we should need a fine tool, a tool freshly ground. For the orthography was not all. Owing to the imitative and middle-class spirit of prejudice, which unfortunately is ever on the increase, many of the most gritty words of the Provençal tongue had been discarded as vulgar, and in their place, the poets who preceded the Félibres, even those of repute, had commonly employed, without any critical sense, corrupt forms and bastard words of uneducated French. Having thus determined, Roumanille and I, to write our verses in the language of the people, we saw it was necessary to bring out strongly the energy, freshness, and richness of expression that characterised it, and to render the pureness of speech used in districts untouched by extreme influences.
Even so the Roumanians, the poet Alexander tells us, when they wished to elevate their national tongue which the bourgeois class had lost or corrupted, went to seek it out in the villages and mountains among the primitive peasants.
In order to conform the written Provençal as much as possible to the pronunciation in general use in Provence, we decided to suppress certain letters or etymological finals fallen into disuse, such as the “s” of the plural, the “t” of the particle, the “r” of the infinitive, and the “ch” in certain words like “fach,” “dich,” “puech,” &c.
But let no one think that these innovations, though they concerned none save a small circle of patois poets, as we were then called, were introduced into general usage without a severe struggle. From Avignon to Marseilles, all those who wrote or rhymed in the language contested for their routine or their fashion, and promptly took the field against the reformers. A war of pamphlets containing envenomed articles between these opponents and we young Avignons continued to rage for many years.
At Marseilles, the exponents of trivialities, the white-beard rhymesters, the envious and the growlers assembled together of an evening behind the old bookshop of the librarian Boy, there bitterly to bewail the suppression of the “s” and sharpen their weapons against the innovators.
Roumanille the valiant, ever ready to stand in the breech, launched against the adversaries the Greek fire we were all diligently employed in preparing in the crucible of the Gai-Savoir. And because we had on our side, not only a just and good cause, but faith, enthusiasm, youth—and something else besides—it ended in our being, as I will show you later, victors on the field of battle.
But to return to the school of Monsieur Dupuy.
One afternoon we were in the courtyard, playing at “Three jumps,” when in our midst appeared a new pupil. He was tall and well made, with a Henri IV. nose, a hat cocked to one side, and an air of maturity heightened by the unlit cigar in his mouth. His hands thrust in the pockets of his short coat, he came up just as if he were one of us.
“Well, what are you after?” said he. “Would you like me to see if I can do these three jumps?”
And without more ado, light as a cat, he took a run and went three hands beyond the highest jump that had been touched. We clapped him, and demanded where he had sprung from.