No spot more favourable could have been imagined wherein to cradle a glorious dream, to bring to flower the bloom of an ideal, than this château on the hillside, surrounded by the serene blue distances, enlivened by these lovely laughing maidens and a group of young men vowed to the worship of the Beautiful under the three headings of Poetry, Love, and Provence, a trinity which for them formed always a unity.
It was written in the stars that one Sunday of flowers, May 21, 1854, at the full tide of spring and youth, seven poets should meet at this château of Font-Ségugne.
Paul Giéra, a joking spirit who signed his name backwards as “Glaup”; Roumanille, a propagandist who, without appearing to do so, unceasingly fanned the flame of the sacred fire all around him; Aubanel, converted by Roumanille to our tongue, and who, under the influence of love’s sun, was at this moment bursting into bloom with his “Pomegranate”; Mathieu, lost in visions of a reawakened Provence, and, as ever, the gallant squire of all fair damsels; Brunet with his face resembling the Christ, dreaming his utopia of a terrestrial Paradise; and the peasant Tavan, who, stretched on the grass, sang all day like the cicada; finally, Frédéric, ready to send on the wings of the mistral, like the mountain shepherds to their flocks, his hailing cry to all brothers of the race, and to plant his standard on the summit of the Ventoux.
At dinner, the conversation turned that evening, as so often before, on the best means of rescuing our language from the decadence into which it had fallen since those ruling classes, faithless to the honour of Provence, had relegated the language to the position of a mere dialect. And, in view of the fact that at the last two Congresses, both at Arles and at Aix, every attempt on the part of the young school of Avignon patriots to rehabilitate the Provençal tongue had been badly received and dismissed, the seven at Font-Ségugne determined to band together and take the enterprise in hand.
“And now,” said Glaup, “as we are forming a new body we must have a new name. The old one of “minstrel” will not do, as every rhymer, even he who has nothing to rhyme about, adopts it. That of troubadour is no better, for, appropriated to designate the poets of a certain period, it has been tarnished by abuse. We must find something new.”
Then I took up the speech:
“My friends,” said I, “in an old country legend I believe we shall find the predestined name.” And I proceeded: “His Reverence Saint-Anselme, reading and writing one day from the Holy Scriptures, was lifted up into the highest heaven. Seated near the Infant Christ he beheld the Holy Virgin. Having saluted the aged saint, the Blessed Virgin continued her discourse to her Infant Son, relating how she came to suffer for His sake seven bitter wounds.” Here I omitted the recital of the wounds until I came to the following passage: “The fourth wound that I suffered for Thee, O my precious Son, it was when I lost Thee, and seeking three days and three nights found Thee not until I entered the Temple, where Thou wast disputing with the scribes of the Law, with the seven ‘Félibres’ of the Law.”
“The seven Félibres of the Law—but here we are!” cried they all in chorus: “Félibre is the name.”
Then Glaup, filling up the seven glasses with a bottle of Châteauneuf which had been just seven years in the cellar, proposed the health of the Félibres. “And since we have begun baptizing,” he continued, “let us adopt all the vocabulary which can be legitimately derived from our new name. I suggest, therefore, that every branch of Félibres numbering not less than seven members shall be called a ‘Félibrerie,’ in memory, gentlemen, of the Pleiades of Avignon.”
“And I,” said Roumanille, “beg to propose the pretty verb ‘félibriser,’ signifying to meet together as we are now doing.”