The winter of 1847-1848 began happily enough. The people settled down quietly again to their business of making a tolerably good harvest, and the hateful subject of politics was dropped, thank God. In our country of Maillane we even started, for our amusement, some representations of popular tragedies and comedies, into which I threw myself with all the fervour of my seventeen years. Then in the month of February, suddenly the Revolution burst upon us, and good-bye to all the gentle arts of blessed peace-time.

At the entrance of the village, in a small vine-clad cottage, there dwelt at this time a worthy old body named Riquelle. She wore the Arlesian dress of bygone days, her large white coife surmounted by a broad-brimmed black felt hat, while a white band, passing under the chin, framed her cheeks. By her distaff and the produce of her small plot of ground she supported herself, but one saw from the care she took of her person, as well as by her speech, that she had known better days.

My first recollection of Riquelle dated back to when, at about seven years old, I was in the habit of passing her door on my way to school. Seated on the little bench at her threshold, her fingers busy knitting, she would call to me:

“Have you not some fine tomatoes on your farm, my little lad? Bring me one next time you come along.”

Time after time she asked me this, and I, boy-like, invariably forgot all about it, till one day I mentioned to my father that old Riquelle never saw me without asking for tomatoes.

“The accursed old dame,” growled my father angrily; “tell her they are not ripe, do you hear, neither have they ripened for many a long year.”

The next time I saw Riquelle I gave her this message, and she dropped the subject.

Many years later, the day after the Proclamation of the Revolution of 1848, coming to the village to inquire the latest news, the first person I saw was Dame Riquelle standing there in her doorway, all alert and animated, with a great topaz ring blazing on her finger.

“HÉ, but the tomatoes have ripened this year,” she cried out to me. “They are going to plant the ‘trees of liberty,’[5] and we shall all eat of those good apples of Paradise.... Oh, Sainte-Marianne, I never thought to live to see it again! FrÉdÉric, my boy, become a Republican.”

I remarked on the fine ring she wore.

“Ha, yes, it is a fine ring,” she rejoined. “Fancy—I have not worn it since the day Bonaparte quitted this country for the island of Elba! A friend gave me this ring in the days—ah, what days those were—when we all danced the ‘Carmagnole.’”

So saying she raised her skirt, and, making a step or two of the old dance, entered her cottage chuckling softly at the recollection of those bygone days.

But when I recounted the incident to my father his recollections were of a graver kind.

“I also saw the Republic,” he said, “and it is to be hoped the atrocious things which took place then will never be repeated. They killed the King Louis XVI., and the beautiful Queen, his wife, besides princesses, priests, and numberless good people of all sorts. Then foreign kings combined and made war upon France. In order to defend the Republic, there was a general conscription. All were called out, the lame, the blind, the halt—not a man but had to enlist. I remember how we met a regiment of Allobrogians on their way to Toulon. One of them seized my young brother, and placing his naked sword across the boy’s neck—he was but twelve years old—commanded him to cry out ‘Long live the Republic,’ or he would finish him off. The boy did as he was told, but the fright killed him. The nobles and the good priests, all were suspected, and those who could emigrate did so, in order to escape the guillotine. The AbbÉ Riousset, disguised as a shepherd, made his way to Piedmont with the flocks of Monsieur de LubiÈres. We managed to save Monsieur Victorin Cartier, whose lands we farmed. For three months we hid him in a cave we dug out under the wine-casks, and whenever the municipal officers or the police of the district came down upon us to count the lambs we had in the fold, and the loaves of bread in the pans, in accordance with the law, my poor mother would hasten to fry a big omelette at the stove.

“When once they had eaten and drunk their fill, they would forget, or pretend to do so, to take further perquisites, and off they would go, carrying great branches of laurel with which to greet the victorious armies of the Republic. The chÂteaux were pillaged, the very dove-cotes demolished, the bells melted down, and the crosses broken. In the churches they piled up great mounds of earth on which they planted pine-trees, oaks and junipers. The church at Maillane was turned into a club, and if you refused to go to their meetings you were at once denounced and notified as ‘suspect.’ Our priest, who happened unfortunately to be a coward and a traitor, announced one day from the pulpit that all he had hitherto preached was a lie. He roused such indignation that, had not every man lived in fear of his neighbour, they would have stoned him. It was this same priest who another time wound up his discourse with the injunction that any one who knew of or aided in hiding a ‘suspect,’ would be held guilty of mortal sin unless he denounced such a one at once to the Commune. Finally, they ended by abolishing all observance of Sundays and feast-days, and instead, every tenth day, in great pomp they adored the Goddess of Reason—and would you know who was the goddess at Maillane? Why, none other than the old dame Riquelle!”

We all exclaimed in surprise.

“Riquelle,” continued my father, “was at that time eighteen years old. A handsome, well-grown girl, one of the most admired in all the country. I was about the same age. Her father was Mayor of Maillane and by trade a shoemaker—he made me a pair of shoes I remember wearing when I joined the army. Well, imagine it—I saw this same Riquelle in the garments, or rather the lack of garments, of a heathen goddess, a red cap on her head, seated on the altar of the church.”

All this my father recounted at supper one evening about the year 1848.

Some eleven years after, I, finding myself in Paris just after the publication of Mireille, was dining at the house of the hospitable banker Milland, he who delighted to assemble every week at his board a gathering of artists, savants, and men of letters. We were about fifty, and I had the honour of sitting on one side of our charming hostess, while MÉry was on the other. Towards the end of dinner an old man very simply attired addressed me in ProvenÇal from the further end of the table, inquiring if I came from Maillane. It was the father of my host, and I rose and sat down beside him.

“Do you happen to know the daughter of the once famous Mayor of Maillane, Jacques Riquelle?” he inquired.

“Riquelle the goddess? Aye, indeed,” I answered; “we are right good friends.”

“Well, fifty years ago,” said the old man, “when I went to Maillane to sell horses and mules——”

“You gave her a topaz ring!” I cried with a sudden inspiration.

The old fellow shook his sides with laughter and answered, delighted: “What, she told you about that? Ah, my dear sir——”

But at this moment we were interrupted by the banker, who, in accordance with his custom, after every meal came to pay his respects to his worthy father, whereupon the latter, placing his hands patriarchal fashion on his son’s head, bestowed on him his benediction.

But to return to my own story. In spite of the views held by my family, this outburst of liberty and enterprise, which breaks down the old fences when a revolution is rife, had found me already aflame and eager to follow the onrush. At the first proclamation signed with the illustrious name of Lamartine my muse awoke and burst forth into fiery song, which the local papers of Arles and Avignon hastened to publish:

A mad enthusiasm seized me for all humanitarian and liberal ideas; and my Republicanism, while it scandalised the Royalists of Maillane, who regarded me as a turncoat, delighted the Republicans, who, being in the minority, were enchanted at getting me to join them in shouting the “Marseillaise.”

And here, in Provence, as elsewhere, all this brought in its train broils and internal divisions. The Reds proclaimed their sentiments by wearing a belt and scarf of scarlet, while the Whites wore green. The former carried a buttonhole of thyme, emblem of the mountain, and the latter a sprig of the royal lily. The Republicans planted the “trees of liberty” at every corner, and by night the Royalists kicked them down. Thereupon followed riots and knife-thrusts; till before long this good people, these Provenceaux of the same race, who a month before had been living in brotherly love and good fellowship, were all ready to make mincemeat of one another for a party wrangle that led to nothing.

All students of the same year took sides and split into rival parties, neither of which ever lost an opportunity of a skirmish. Every evening we Reds, after washing down our omelettes with plenty of good wine, issued from the inn according to the correct village fashion, in shirt sleeves, with a napkin round our necks. Down the street we went to the sound of the tambour, dancing the “Carmagnole” and singing at the pitch of our voices the latest song in vogue.

We finished the evening usually by keeping high carnival, and yelling “Long live Marianne,”[6] as we waved high our red belts.

One fine day, as I appeared in the morning, none too early, after an evening of this kind, I found my father awaiting me. “Come this way, FrÉdÉric,” he said in his most serious and impressive manner, “I wish to speak to you.”

“You are in for it this time, FrÉdÉric,” thought I to myself; “now all the fat is in the fire!” Following him in silence, he led the way to a quiet spot at the back of the farm, where he made me sit down on the bank by his side.

“What is this they tell me?” he began. “That you, my son, have joined these young scamps who go about yelling ‘Long live Marianne’—that you dance the ‘Carmagnole,’ waving your red sash? Ah, FrÉdÉric, you are young—know you it was with that dance and those same cries the Revolutionists set up the scaffold? Not content with having published in all the papers a song in which you pour contempt on all kings—— But what harm have they done you, may I ask, these unfortunate kings?”

I must confess I found this question somewhat difficult to answer, and my sire continued:

“Monsieur Durand-Maillane, a learned man, since he it was who presided at the famous Convention, and wise as he was learned, refused to sign the death warrant of the King, and speaking one day to his nephew PÉlissier, also member of the Convention, he warned him: ‘PÉlissier,’ said he, ‘thou art young and thou wilt surely see the day when the people will have to pay with many thousands of heads for this death of their King.’ A prophecy which was verified only too fully by twenty years of ruthless war.”

“But,” I protested, “this Republic desires harm to no man. They have just abolished capital punishment for political offenders. Some of the first names in France figure in the provisionary Government—the astronomer Arago, the great poet Lamartine; our ‘trees of liberty’[7] are blessed by the priests themselves. And, let me ask you, my father,” I insisted, “is it not a fact that before 1789 the aristocrats oppressed the people somewhat beyond endurance?”

“Well,” conceded my worthy sire, “I will not deny there were abuses, great abuses—I can cite you an example. One day—I must have been about fourteen years old—I was coming from Saint-RÉmy with a waggon of straw trusses. The mistral blew with such force I failed to hear a voice behind calling to me to make way for a carriage to pass. The owner, who was a priest of the nobility, Monsieur de Verclos, managed at last to pass me, and as he did so gave me a lash with his whip across the face, which covered me with blood. There were some peasants pasturing close by, and their indignation was such at this action that they fell upon the man of God, in spite of his Order being at that time held sacred, and beat him without mercy. Ah, undoubtedly,” reflected my father, “there were some bad specimens among them, and the Revolution just at first attracted a good many of us. But gradually everything went wrong and as usual the good paid for the bad.”

And so with the Revolution of 1848; all at first appeared to be on good and straight lines. We Provenceaux were represented in the National Assembly by such first-class men as Berryer, Lamartine, Lamennais, BÉranger, Lacordaire, Garnier-PagÈs, Marie, and a poet of the people named Astouin. But the party-spirited reactionaries soon poisoned everything; the butcheries and massacres of June horrified the nation. The moderates grew cold, the extremists became venomous, and all my fair young visions of a platonic Republic were overcast with gloomy doubt. Happily light from another quarter shed its beams on my soul. Nature, revealing herself in the grand order, space and peace of the rustic life, opened her arms to me; it was the triumph of Ceres.

In the present day, when machinery has almost obliterated agriculture, the cultivation of the soil is losing more and more the noble aspect of that sacred art and of its idyllic character. Now at harvest time the plains are covered with a kind of monster spider and gigantic crab, which scratch up the ground with their claws, and cut down the grain with cutlasses, and bind the sheaves with wire; then follow other monsters snorting steam, a sort of Tarascon dragon who seizes on the fallen wheat, cuts the straw, sifts the grain, and shakes out the ears of corn. All this is done in latest American style, a dull matter of business, with never a song to make toil a gladness, amid a whirl of noise, dust, and hideous smoke, and the constant dread, if you are not constantly on the watch, that the monster will snap off one of your limbs. This is Progress, the fatal Reaper, against whom it is useless to contend, bitter result of science, that tree of knowledge whose fruit is both good and evil.

But at the time of which I write, the old methods were still in use, with all the picturesque apparatus of classic times.

So soon as the corn took on a shade of apricot, throughout the Commune of Arles, a messenger went the round of the mountain villages blowing his horn and crying: “This is to give notice that the corn in Arles is ripening.”

Thereupon the mountaineers, in groups of threes and fours, with their wives and daughters, their donkeys and mules, made ready to descend to the plains for harvesting. A couple of harvesters, together with a boy or young girl to stack the sheaves, made up a solque, and the men hired themselves out in gangs of so many solques, who undertook the field by contract. At the head of the group walked the chief, making a pathway through the corn, while another, called the bailiff, organised and directed the work.

As in the days of Cincinnatus, Cato and Virgil, we reaped with the sickle, the fingers of the right hand protected by a shield of twisted reeds or rushes.

At Arles, about the time of Saint John’s Day, thousands of these harvest labourers might be seen assembled in the Place des Hommes, their scythes slung on their backs, standing and lying about while waiting to be hired.

In the mountain districts a man who had never done his harvesting in the plains of Arles found it hard, so they said, to get any girl to marry him, and it was on this custom FÉlix Gras founded the story of his epic poem “Les Charbonniers.”

On our own farm we hired from seven to eight of these groups every year at harvest-time. It was a fine upset throughout the house when these folk arrived. All sorts of special utensils were unearthed for the occasion, barrels made of willow wood, enormous earthenware pans, big pots and jugs for wine, a whole battery of the rough pottery made at Apt. It was a time of constant feasting and gaiety, above all when we lit the bonfires on Saint John’s Day and danced round them singing the harvest songs.

Every day at dawn the reapers ranged themselves in line, and so soon as the chief had opened out a pathway through the cornfield all glistening with morning dew, they swung their blades, and as they slowly advanced down fell the golden corn. The sheaf-binders, most of whom were young girls in the freshness of their youthful bloom, followed after, bending low over the fallen grain, laughing and jesting with a gaiety it rejoiced one’s heart to see. Then as the sun appeared bathing the sky all rosy red and sending forth a glory of golden rays, the chief, raising high in the air his scythe, would cry, “Hail to the new day,” and all the scythes would follow suit. Having thus saluted the newly risen sun, again they fell to work, the cornfield bowing down as they advanced with rhythmic harmonious movement of their bare arms. From time to time the bailiff cried out, mustering his troop for another turn. At last, after four hours’ vigorous work, the chief would give the word for all to rest. Whereupon, after washing the handles of their scythes in the nearest stream, they would sit down on the sheaves in the middle of the stubble, and take their first repast.

It was my work, with the aid of Babache, our old mule, to take round the provisions in rope baskets.

The harvesters had five meals a day, beginning with the breakfast at seven o’clock, which consisted of anchovies spread on bread steeped in oil and vinegar, together with raw onions, an invariable accompaniment. At ten o’clock they had the “big drink,” as it was called, with hard-boiled eggs and cheese; at one o’clock dinner, soup and vegetables; at four a large salad, with which were eaten crusts rubbed with garlic; and finally the supper, consisting either of pork or mutton and sometimes an omelette strongly flavoured with onion, a favourite harvesting dish. In the field they drank by turns from a barrel taken round by the chief and swung on a pole, which he balanced on the shoulder of the one drinking. For their meals in the field they had one plate between three, each one helping himself with a big wooden spoon.

When the reapers’ work was done, came the gleaners to gather the stray ears left among the stubble. Troops of these women went the rounds of the farms, sleeping at night under small tents, which served to protect them from the mosquito. A third of their gleanings, according to the usage in the country of Arles, went always to the hospital.

Such were the people, fine children of the soil, who were not only my models but my teachers in the art of poetry. It was in this company, the grand sun of Provence streaming down on me as I lay full length beneath a willow-tree, that I learnt to pipe and sing such songs as “Les Moissons” and others in “Les Iles d’Or.”