Memoirs of Mistral

by Frédéric Mistral

I replied that I should be required also to know the names of all the mountains and all the rivers in the world.

Here I was interrupted by a gardener from Saint-Rémy with a big guttural voice, who inquired whether I knew where was the source of the Fountain of Vaucluse, and if it were true that seven rivers, each of them big enough to float a ship, sprang from that fountain. He had it on good authority also—could I confirm it?—that a shepherd had let fall his crook in the water at Vaucluse, and had found it again in a spring at Saint-Rémy!

I had hardly time to think of a suitable and judicious answer before another of the company posed me with the question as to why the sea was salt.

Here I considered myself on safe ground, and was beginning to reel off in airy fashion: “Because it contains sulphate of potassium, sulphate of magnesia, chloride——”

“No, no, that’s all wrong,” interrupted my questioner. “It was a fisherman who told me—he was from Martigne and should know. The sea is salt owing to the many ships carrying cargoes of salt which have been wrecked during past years.”

I discreetly gave way before this authority and hastened to enumerate other subjects on which I was about to be examined by the professors, such as the cause of thunder, lightning, frost and wind.

“Allow me to interrupt you, young man,” broke in the first speaker again. “You should be able then to tell us from whence comes the mistral, that accursed mischievous wind of our country. I have always heard that it issues from a hole in a certain great rock, and that if one could only cork up the hole, there would be an end of the mistral. Now that would be an invention worth the making!”

“The Government would oppose it,” said another; “if it were not for the mistral, Provence would be the garden of France! Nothing would hold us back—we should become too rich to please the rest.”

“Finally,” I continued, “we have to know all about the number, size, and distance of the stars—how many miles our earth is from the sun, &c.”

“That passes everything,” cried a native of Noves. “Who is going up there to measure the distance? Cannot you see, young man, that the professors are laughing at you? A pretty science indeed to measure the miles between the sun and the moon; they will be teaching you next that pigeons are suckled! Now if you would tell me at what quarter of the moon to sow celery or to cure the pig-disease, I would say, ‘Here we have a real useful science’—but all this boy prates of is pure rubbish!”