Besides those I have mentioned as figuring at the Congress of Arles, here are the new names that appeared at the Congress of Aix: Léon Alègre, the Abbé Aubert, Autheman Bellot, Brunet, Chalvet, the Abbé Lambert, Lejourdan, Peyrottes, Ricard-Bérard, Tavan, Vidal, &c., and three poetesses, Mesdemoiselles Reine Garde, Léonide Constans, and Hortense Rolland.
A literary séance was held after lunch in the Town Hall, before all the grand world of Aix. The big hall was courteously decorated with the colours of Provence and the arms of all the Provençal towns, and on a banner of crimson velvet were inscribed the names of the principal Provençal poets of the last century.
The Mayor of Aix, who also held the post of deputy, was at that time Monsieur Rigaud, the same who later made a translation of “Mirèio” into French verse.
After the overture, sung by a choir to the words of Jean-Batiste, and beginning:
Troubadours of Provence
For us this day is glorious.
Behold the glad Renaissance
Of the language of the South!
the President d’Astros discoursed delightfully in Provençal, and then, in turn, each poet contributed some piece of his own.
Roumanille, much applauded, recited one of his tales, and sang “La Jeune Aveugle;” Aubanel gave us “Des Jumeaux,” and I the “Fin du Moissonneur.” But the greatest successes were produced by the song of the peasant Tavan, “Les Frisons de Mariette,” and the recitation of the mason Lacroix, who made us all shiver with his “Pauvre Martine.”
Emile Zola, then a scholar at the College of Aix, was present at this meeting, and forty years afterwards this is what he said in the discourse he gave at the Felibrée of Sceaux (1892):
“I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and I can see myself as a school-boy escaping from college in order to be present in the great room of the Town Hall at Aix at a poets’ fête, somewhat resembling the one I have the honour to preside over to-day. Mistral was there, declaiming his ‘Fin du Moissonneur’; Roumanille and Aubanel also, and many others who, a few years later, were to be the ‘Félibres’ and who were then but ‘Troubadours.’ At the banquet that night we had the pleasure of raising our glasses to the health of old Bellot, who had made a great name, not only in Marseilles but throughout Provence, as a comic poet, and who, overcome at seeing this outburst of patriotic enthusiasm, replied to us somewhat sadly: