But to return to my own story. In spite of the views held by my family, this outburst of liberty and enterprise, which breaks down the old fences when a revolution is rife, had found me already aflame and eager to follow the onrush. At the first proclamation signed with the illustrious name of Lamartine my muse awoke and burst forth into fiery song, which the local papers of Arles and Avignon hastened to publish:
Réveillez-vous enfants de la Gironde,
Et tressaillez dans vos sepulcres froids;
La liberté va rajeunir le monde ...
Guerre éternelle entre nous et les rois.
A mad enthusiasm seized me for all humanitarian and liberal ideas; and my Republicanism, while it scandalised the Royalists of Maillane, who regarded me as a turncoat, delighted the Republicans, who, being in the minority, were enchanted at getting me to join them in shouting the “Marseillaise.”
And here, in Provence, as elsewhere, all this brought in its train broils and internal divisions. The Reds proclaimed their sentiments by wearing a belt and scarf of scarlet, while the Whites wore green. The former carried a buttonhole of thyme, emblem of the mountain, and the latter a sprig of the royal lily. The Republicans planted the “trees of liberty” at every corner, and by night the Royalists kicked them down. Thereupon followed riots and knife-thrusts; till before long this good people, these Provenceaux of the same race, who a month before had been living in brotherly love and good fellowship, were all ready to make mincemeat of one another for a party wrangle that led to nothing.
All students of the same year took sides and split into rival parties, neither of which ever lost an opportunity of a skirmish. Every evening we Reds, after washing down our omelettes with plenty of good wine, issued from the inn according to the correct village fashion, in shirt sleeves, with a napkin round our necks. Down the street we went to the sound of the tambour, dancing the “Carmagnole” and singing at the pitch of our voices the latest song in vogue.
We finished the evening usually by keeping high carnival, and yelling “Long live Marianne,”[6] as we waved high our red belts.
One fine day, as I appeared in the morning, none too early, after an evening of this kind, I found my father awaiting me. “Come this way, Frédéric,” he said in his most serious and impressive manner, “I wish to speak to you.”
“You are in for it this time, Frédéric,” thought I to myself; “now all the fat is in the fire!” Following him in silence, he led the way to a quiet spot at the back of the farm, where he made me sit down on the bank by his side.
“What is this they tell me?” he began. “That you, my son, have joined these young scamps who go about yelling ‘Long live Marianne’—that you dance the ‘Carmagnole,’ waving your red sash? Ah, Frédéric, you are young—know you it was with that dance and those same cries the Revolutionists set up the scaffold? Not content with having published in all the papers a song in which you pour contempt on all kings—— But what harm have they done you, may I ask, these unfortunate kings?”
I must confess I found this question somewhat difficult to answer, and my sire continued: