“From Châteauneuf,” he answered—“the country where they grow good wine. Perhaps you have never heard of Châteauneuf, Châteauneuf-du-Pape?”
“Yes, we have. And what is your name?”
“Anselme Mathieu,” he replied.
And with these words he plunged his two hands into his pockets and brought out a store of old cigar-ends, which he offered round with a courteous and smiling air.
We, who for the most part had never dared to smoke (unless, indeed, as children the roots of the mulberry-tree), thereupon regarded with great respect this hero, who did things in so grand a manner, and was evidently accustomed to high life.
Thus it was that I first met Mathieu, the gentle author of the “Farandole.” On one occasion, I told this story to our friend Daudet, who loved Mathieu, and the idea of the old ends of cigars pleased him so much that in his romance “Jack,” he makes use of it with his little negro prince, who performs the same act of largess.
With Roumanille and Mathieu, we were thus a trio who formed the nucleus of those who a little later were to found the Félibrige. The gallant Mathieu—heaven knows how he contrived it—was never seen except at the hours of food or recreation. On account of his already grown-up air, though not more than sixteen, and certainly backward in his studies, he had been allowed a room on the top story under the pretext that he could thus work more freely, and there in his attic, the walls of which he had decorated with pictures, nude figures and plaster casts of Pradier, all day long he dreamed and smoked, made verses, and, a good part of the time, leant out of the window, watching the people below, or the sparrows carrying food to their young under the eaves. Then he would joke, rather broadly, with Mariette the chamber-maid, ogle the master’s daughter, and, when he descended from his heights, relate to us all sorts of gossip.
But on one subject he always took himself seriously, and that was his patent of nobility:
“My ancestors were marquises,” he told us gravely, “Marquises of Montredon. At the time of the Revolution, my grandfather gave up his title, and afterwards, finding himself ruined, he would not resume it since he could not keep it up properly.”
There was always something romantic and elusive in the existence of Mathieu. He would disappear at times like the cats who go to Rome.