They needed a name to call themselves by. They had all met together to talk things over in the old castle of Font-Ségugne, or, as Mistral more picturesquely puts it: "It was written in heaven that one blossoming Sunday, the twenty-first of May, 1854, in the full springtide of life and of the year, seven poets should come to meet together in the castle of Font-Ségugne." Several suggestions were made for a name for this brotherhood, but presently Mistral announced that in an old folk-story he had collected at his birthplace, Maillane, he believed that he had found the word they were in search of. In this folk-story the boy Christ is represented as discoursing in the temple with "the seven félibres of the Law."
"Why, that is us!" exclaimed the enthusiastic young men as Mistral finished, and there on the spot "félibre" was adopted as the password of their order, Mistral coining the word "félibrige" to represent the work they aimed to do, and also their association. The name stuck, and has now for many years been the banner-word for the vigorous school of Provençal literature and the allied arts of painting and sculpture which has responded with such eager vitality to Mistral's rallying cry.
But, excellent as are the other poets which the school has produced—and one need only glance through a recent Anthologie du Félibrige to realize what a wealth of true poetry the word "félibrige" now stands for—there can be no question that its greatest asset still remains Mistral's own work, as it was his first great poem, Mirèio, which first drew the eyes of literary Paris, more than inclined to be contemptuous, to the Provençal renaissance.
Adolphe Dumas had been sent to Provence in the year 1856 by the Minister of Public Instruction to collect the folk-songs of the people, and calling on Mistral (then twenty-six), living quietly with his widowed mother at Maillane, he had found him at work on Mirèio. Mistral read some passages to him, with the result that the generous Dumas returned to Paris excitedly to proclaim the advent of a new poet. Presently, Mistral accepted his invitation to visit Paris, was introduced to the great Lamartine—who has left some charming pages descriptive of his visit,—read some of Mirèio to him, and was hailed by him as "the Homer of Provence."
The press, however, had its little fling at the new-comer. "The Mistral it appears," said one pitiful punster, "has been incarnated in a poem. We shall soon see whether it is anything else but wind." Such has been the invariable welcome of great men in a small world.
But Mistral had no taste for Paris, either as a lion or a butt, and, after a few days' stay, we find him once more quietly at home at Maillane. Yet he had brought back with him one precious trophy—the praise of Lamartine; and when, in the course of a year or two (1859), Mirèio came to be published at Avignon, it bore, as it still bears, this heart-felt dedication to Lamartine:
"To thee I dedicate Mirèio; it is my heart and my soul; it is the flower of my years; it is a bunch of grapes from Crau with all its leaves—a rustic's offering."
With the publication of Mirèio Mistral instantly "arrived," instantly found himself on that throne which, as year has followed year, has become more securely his own. Since then he has written much noble poetry, all embodying and vitalizing the legendary lore of his native land, a land richer in momentous history, perhaps, than any other section of Europe. But in addition to his poetry he has, single-handed, carried through the tremendous scholarly task of compiling a dictionary of the Provençal language—a Thesaurus of the Félibrige, for which work the Institute awarded him a prize of ten thousand francs.
In 1904, he was awarded the Nobel prize of 100,000 francs, but such is his devotion to his fellow-countrymen that he did not keep that prize for himself, but used it to found the Musée Arlésien at Arles, a museum designed as a treasure house of anything and everything pertaining to the history and life of Provence—antiquities, furniture, costumes, paintings, and so forth.
It was in Arles in 1909, the fiftieth birthday of Mirèio, that Mistral, then seventy-nine years old, may be said to have reached the summit of his romantic fame. A great festival was held in his honour, in which the most distinguished men of France took part. A dramatized version of his Mirèio was played in the old Roman amphitheatre, and a striking statue of him was unveiled in the antique public square, the Place du Forum, with the shade of Constantine looking on, one might feel, from his mouldering palace hard by.