I hunted diligently for a long time to find out whence that proverb could have come, what was that papal mule, and that kick reserved throughout seven years. No one here has been able to inform me on this subject, not even Francet Mamaï, my fife player, though he has all the Provençal legends at his fingers’ ends. Francet thinks with me that it must be founded upon some old tradition of Provence; yet he has never heard it referred to except in this proverb.
“You will not find that anywhere but in the Library of the Grasshoppers,” said the old fifer to me, with a laugh.
The idea struck me as a good one, and since the Library of the Grasshoppers is at my door, I went and shut myself up there for a week.
It is a marvellous library, admirably equipped, open to poets day and night, and attended by little librarians who constantly make music for you with cymbals. There I passed some delicious days, and, after a week of research—on my back—I ended by discovering what I wished to know, that is to say, the history of my mule and of that famous kick saved up for seven years. The story is a pretty one, although a trifle naïve, and I am going to try to tell it you just as I read it yesterday morning in a sky-colored manuscript, which smelled delightfully of dry lavender, and had long gossamer threads for binding threads.
He who has never seen the Avignon of the time of the Popes, has seen nothing. For gayety, for life, for animation, for a succession of fêtes, there never was a city its equal. From morning till night there were processions and pilgrimages; streets strewn with flowers and hung with rich tapestries; cardinals arriving by the Rhône, banners flying, galleys bedecked with flags; papal soldiers chanting in Latin on the public squares; begging friars with their alms-rattles; then, in addition, from roof to cellar of the houses which swarmed humming around the great papal palace like bees about their hive, there were heard the tic-tac of the lace-makers’ looms, the flying of the shuttles weaving cloth-of-gold for vestments, the little hammers of the vase-sculptors, the keyboards being attuned at the lute-makers’, the songs of the warpers; and, overhead, the booming of the bells was heard, and always below sounded the tinkle of the tambourines on the river bank by the bridge. For with us, when the people are happy they must be dancing, dancing ever; and since in those days the streets in the city were too narrow for the farandole, fifers and tambourine players took up their post upon the Avignon Bridge, in the cool breezes of the Rhône, and day and night they danced and danced.... Ah! happy time, happy city, when halberds did not wound, and state prisons were used only for cooling wine! No famine; no wars! That shows the way the Popes of the Comtat[11] knew how to govern their people; that is why their people regretted them so deeply!
There was one Pope especially, a good old gentleman whom they called Boniface. Ah! how many tears were shed for him in Avignon when he died! He was such an amiable, affable prince! He would smile down at you so genially from his mule! And when you passed him—whether you were a poor little digger of madder or the grand provost of the city—he would give you his benediction so courteously! A genuine Pope of Yvetot was he, but of an Yvetot in Provence, with something sly in his laughter, a sprig of sweet marjoram in his cap—and not the semblance of a Jeanneton. The only Jeanneton the good Father had ever been known to have was his vineyard—a little vineyard which he had planted himself, three leagues from Avignon, among the myrtles of Château-Neuf.
Every Sunday, on going out from vespers, the worthy man went to pay his court to it, and when he was seated in the grateful sun, his mule close beside him, his cardinals stretched at the foot of the vine stocks all about, then he would order a flagon of wine of his own bottling—that exquisite, ruby-colored wine, which has been called ever since Château-Neuf of the Popes—and he would drink it appreciatively in little sips, and regard his vineyard with a tender air. Then—the flagon empty, the day closed—he would return joyously to the city, followed by all his chapter; and, after crossing the Bridge of Avignon, in the midst of drum-beats and farandoles, his mule, stirred by the music, took up a little skipping amble, while he himself marked the time of the dance with his cap—a thing which greatly scandalized his cardinals, but caused all the people to say, “Ah! that good prince! Ah! that fine old Pope!”
Next to his vineyard at Château-Neuf, the thing that the Pope loved best in the world was his mule. The good old man doted on that beast. Every evening before going to bed he went to see if her stable was well shut, if nothing was lacking in the manger; and he never rose from the table without having had prepared under his very eyes a huge bowl of wine à la Française, with plenty of sugar and spice, which he himself carried to the mule, despite the remarks of his cardinals. It must be admitted, however, that the animal was worth the trouble. She was a beautiful mule, black and dappled with red, glossy of coat, sure of foot, large and full of back, and carrying proudly her neat little head, all decked out with pompons, rosettes, silver bells, and bows of ribbon—all this with the mildness of an angel, a naïve eye, and two long ears, always in motion, which gave her the air of an amiable child. All Avignon respected her, and when she went through the streets there was no attention which she did not receive; for everyone knew that this was the best way to be in favor at court, and that, for all her innocent air, the Pope’s mule had led more than one to fortune—witness Tistet Védène and his prodigious adventure.
This Tistet Védène was, from the very first, an audacious young rascal whom his father, Guy Védène, the gold-carver, had been obliged to drive from home because he would not do anything, and demoralized the apprentices. For six months he could be seen trailing his jacket through all the gutters of Avignon, but especially around the papal palace, for this rascal had long had his eye fixed on the Pope’s mule, and you will see what a villainous scheme it was. One day when his Holiness was taking a walk all alone beneath the shadows of the ramparts with his steed, behold my Tistet approached and, clasping his hands with an air of admiration, said to him:
“Ah! mon Dieu! what a splendid mule you have there, Holy Father! Permit me to look at her a moment. Ah, my Pope, the emperor of Germany has not her equal!”