“One of your admirers, Joseph Roumanille.”
“Roumanille!—I remember that name. But I thought it belonged to a dead author.”
“Monsieur, as you see,” answered the author of the ‘Pâquerettes,’ who never allowed any one to tread on his toes, “I am young enough, if it please God, some day to write your epitaph.”
One who was much more gracious to our Congress at Arles was the good Reboul, who wrote to us thus: “May God bless you. May your fights be feasts, your rivals, friends! He who created the skies made those of our country so wide and so blue that there is room for all stars.”
Jules Canonge of Nîmes also wrote to us: “My friends, if you have to battle one day for your cause, remember it was at Arles that you held your first meeting, and that your torch was lit in the proud and noble city which has for arms and for motto, ‘The sword and the wrath of the lion.’”
The Congress at Arles had succeeded too well not to be renewed. The following year, on August 21, 1853, at the suggestion of Gaut, the jovial poet of Aix, an assembly was held at that city. This “Festival of the Bards,” was twice as large as that held at Arles. It was on this occasion that Brizeux, the grand bard of Brittany, addressed to us his greetings and his wishes:
With olive branches shall your heads be crowned;
Only the moors have I, where sad flowers blow:
The one, a sign of peace and joyous round;
The other, but a symbol of our woe.
Let us unite them, friends. Our sons henceforth
Shall wear these flowers upon their brow no more,
Nor sound th’ entrancing songs of our dear North,
When we, the faithful few, have gone before.
Yet, can it die, the fresh and gentle breeze?
The storm-winds bear it hence upon their wing,
But it comes back to kiss the mossy leas.
Can the song die the nightingale did sing?
Nay, nay: our glorious speech in its decline,
O fair Provence, thou wilt restore and save!
Thro’ long years yet that errant voice of thine
Shall sigh, O Merlin, whispering o’er my grave!