After that experience, my parents had to find me another school, not too distant from Maillane, nor of too exalted a condition, for we country people were not proud. So they placed me at a school in Avignon, with Monsieur Millet, who lived in the Rue PÉtramale.

This time, it was Uncle BÉnoni who acted as charioteer. Although Maillane is not more than about six miles from Avignon, at a time when no railways existed, and the roads were broken with heavy waggon wheels, and one had to cross the large bed of the Durance by ferry, the journey to Avignon was a matter of some importance.

Three of my aunts, with my mother, Uncle BÉnoni, and myself, all scrambled into the cart, in which was placed a straw mattress, and thus, a goodly caravan load, we started at sunrise.

I said advisedly “three of my aunts.” Few people, I am sure, can boast of as many aunts as I had. There were a round dozen. First and foremost came the Great-aunt Mistrale, then Aunt Jeanneton, Aunt Madelon, Aunt VÉronique, Aunt Poulinette, Aunt Bourdette, Aunt FranÇoise, Aunt Marie, Aunt Rion, Aunt ThÉrÈse, Aunt MÉlanie and Aunt Lisa. All of them, to-day, are dead and buried, but I love to say over the names of those good women, who, like beneficent fairies, each with her own special attraction, circled round the cradle of my childhood. Add to my aunts the same number of uncles, and then the cousins, their numerous progeny, and you can form some idea of my relations.

Uncle BÉnoni was my mother’s brother and the youngest of the family—dark, thin, loosely made, with a turned-up nose and eyes black as jet. By trade he was a land-surveyor, but he had the reputation of an idler, and was even proud of it. He had a passion for three things, however—dancing, music and jesting.

There was not a better dancer in Maillane, nor one more amusing. At the feast of Saint-Eloi or of Sainte-Agathe, when he and JÉsette, the wrestler, danced the contredanse on the green together, every one crowded there to see him as he imitated the pigeon’s flight. He played, more or less well, on every sort of instrument, violin, bassoon, horn, clarinette, but it was with the tambour-pipes that he excelled, In his youth BÉnoni had not his equal at serenading the village beauties, or for sounding the revel on a May night. And whenever there was a pilgrimage to be made, either to Notre Dame de LumiÈre, or to Saint-Gent, to Vaucluse or Les Saintes-Maries, BÉnoni was invariably the charioteer, and the life and soul of the party, ever willing, nay, delighted, to leave his own work, the daily round of the quiet home, and to be off for a jaunt.

Parties of fifteen to twenty young people in every cart would start off at dawn, foremost among them my uncle, seated on the shaft acting as driver, and keeping up a ceaseless flow of chaff, banter and laughter, during the whole journey.

There was one strange idea he had somehow got fixed in his head, and that was, when he married, to wed no one save a girl of noble birth.

“But such girls wish to marry men of noble birth,” he was warned.

“Well,” retorted BÉnoni, “are not we noble too, in our family? Do you imagine that we Poulinets are a set of clowns like you folk. Our ancestor was a noble exile, he wore a cloak lined with red velvet, buckles on his shoes, and silk stockings!”

At last, by dint of patient inquiries, he really did hear of a family belonging to the old aristocracy, nearly ruined and with seven unmarried, dowerless daughters. The father, a dissipated fellow, was in the habit of selling a portion of his property every year to his creditors, and they ended by acquiring everything, even the chÂteau. So my gallant Uncle BÉnoni put on his best attire, and one fine day presented himself as a suitor. The eldest of the girls, though daughter of a marquis and Commander of Malta, to escape the inevitable destiny of becoming an old maid, ended by accepting him.

It was from such a source that the pretty story entitled “Fin du Marquisat d’Aurel” was taken, written by Henri de la Madeleine, and telling of a noble family fallen to the plebeian class.

As I said, my uncle was an idle fellow. Often about the middle of the day, when he should have been digging or forking in the garden, he would fling aside his tools, and retiring to the shade, draw out his flute and start a rigaudon. At the sound of music, the girls at work in the neighbouring fields would come running, and forthwith he would play a sauterelle and start them all dancing.

In winter he seldom got up before midday.

“Where can one be so snug, so warm, as in one’s bed?” he laughed.

And when we asked if he did not get bored staying in bed, his reply was:

“Not I! When I am sleepy I sleep, and when I am not, I say psalms for the dead.”

Curiously enough, this light-hearted son of Provence never missed a funeral, and the service over, he was always the last to leave the cemetery, remaining behind that he might pray for his own family and for others. Then, resuming his old gaiety, he would observe:

“Another one gone—carried into the city of Saint Repose!”

In his turn he had also to go there. He was eighty-three and the doctor had told his family there was nothing more to be done.

“Bah,” answered, BÉnoni, “what’s the good of worrying. It is the sickest man that will die first.”

He always had his flute on the table beside him.

“Those idiots gave me a bell to ring; but I made them fetch my flute, which answers far better. If I want anything I just play an air instead of calling or ringing.”

And so it happened that he died with his flute in his hand, and they placed it with him in his coffin. This gave rise to the story started by the girls of the silk-mill at Maillane, that as the clock struck twelve, old BÉnoni, flute in hand, rose from

his grave and began playing a veritable devil’s dance, whereupon all the other corpses also arose carrying their coffins, and there in the middle of the “Grand Clos,” having set fire to the coffins in order to warm themselves, they proceeded to perform a mad jig round the fire till daybreak, to the sound of BÉnoni’s flute.

Having now introduced Uncle BÉnoni, I must return to my journey with him. Accompanied by my mother and my three aunts, we all set out for Avignon. The whole way, as we jogged along, we discussed the state of the crops, the plantations, the vineyards that we passed. I was told, one after the other, all the traditional tales that marked the road to Avignon; for example, how, at the bridge of “La Folie,” the wizards formerly held their wild dances, and how at La CroisiÈre the highwaymen would stop the traveller with; “Your money or your life”; this was liable to occur also at the Croix de la Lieue and the Rocher d’Aiguille.

At last we arrived at the sandy bed of the Durance. A year before the flood had swept away the bridge, and it was necessary to cross the river by a ferry-boat. We found some hundred carts there awaiting their turn to go over. We waited with the rest for about two hours, and then embarked, after chasing home “Le Juif,” the big dog, who had followed us so far.

It was past twelve o’clock when we finally reached Avignon. We stabled our horses, like all those from our village, at the HÔtel de Provence, a little inn on the Place du Corps-Saint, and for the rest of the day we roamed about the town.

“Would you like me to treat you to the theatre?” said Uncle BÉnoni; “they are giving Maniclo and the Bishop of Castro this evening.”

“Oh, let us go and see Maniclo!” we responded in chorus.

It was my first visit to the theatre and my star ordained I should see a play of Provence. As for the Bishop of Castro, it was a sombre piece that did not much interest us, and my aunts maintained that they played Maniclo much better at Maillane. For at that time, in our villages, we got up plays both comic and tragic during the winter months. I have seen the Death of CÆsar, Zaire, Joseph and his Brethren, played by the villagers, their costumes made up out of their wives’ skirts and the counterpanes from their beds. They loved the tragedies, and followed with great pleasure the mournful declamation of the five-act piece. But they also gave L’Avocat Pathelin, translated into ProvenÇale, and various lively comedies from the Marseillaise rÉpertoire. BÉnoni was always the leading spirit of these evenings, where, with his violin, he accompanied the songs, and as a youngster I remember taking part in several plays and earning much applause.

The morning after Maniclo came the inevitable parting, and with a heart heavy as a pea that had soaked nine days, I bade farewell to my mother, and went to be shut up in the school of Monsieur Millet, Rue PÉtramale. Monsieur Millet was a big man, tall, with heavy eyebrows, a red face, little pig’s eyes, feet like an elephant’s, hideous square fingers and slovenly appearance.

A woman from the hills, fat and uncomely, cooked for us and managed the house. I never ate so many carrots before or since, carrots badly cooked in a flour sauce. In three months, my poor little body was reduced to a skeleton.

Avignon, the predestined, where one day the Gai-Savoir was to effect the renaissance, was not at that time the bright town of to-day. She had not enlarged her Place de l’Horloge, nor widened out the Place Pic, nor constructed the Grande Rue. The Roque de Dom, which commands the town, was no lovely garden laid out as for a king, but, save for the cemetery, a bare and barren rock, while the ramparts, half in ruins, were surrounded by ditches full of rubbish and stagnant water. Rough street-porters formed the city corporation, and made laws as they chose for the town suburbs. It was they and their chief, a sort of Hercules nicknamed “Four Arms,” who swept away the Town Hall of Avignon in 1848.

Here, as in Italy, every week each house was visited by a black-clad penitent, who, face covered, with two holes for eyes, went round shaking his money-box chaunting solemnly:

“For the poor prisoners!”

In the streets one constantly ran up against all sorts of local celebrities. There was the Sister Boute-Cuire, her covered basket on her arm, and a big crucifix on her ample bosom; or the plasterer Barret, who in some street fight with the Liberals had once lost his hat, and thereupon sworn never to wear one again till Henri V. was on the throne, a vow that involved his going bare-headed for the rest of his life. And at every corner were to be seen the picturesque pensioners of Avignon, a branch of the Military Hotel in Paris, with their wide-brimmed hats and long blue capes, venerable remnants of ancient wars, maimed, lame and blind, who with wooden legs and cautious steps hammered their careful way along the cobbled pavements.

The town was passing through a state of unrest and upheaval between the old and new rÈgimes, the members of which still fought in secret. Terrible memories of past evils, abuses, reproaches, yet survived, and were very bitter between people of a certain age. The Carlists talked incessantly of the Orange Tribunal, of Jourdan Coupe-tÊtes, of the massacres of La GlaciÈre. The Liberals were always ready to retaliate with the year 1815, and the assassination of Marshal Brune, whose corpse had been thrown into the RhÔne, while his property was plundered and the murderers let go unpunished. Among these latter, Pointer left so notorious a reputation that, did any upstart achieve sudden success in his business, it was at once said of him, “Here are some of MarÉchal Brune’s louis cropping up again.”

The people of Avignon, like those of Aix and Marseilles, and indeed of all the towns of Provence at that time, regretted the disappearance of the Lily and the White Flag. The warm sympathy on the part of our predecessors for the royal cause was not, I think, so much a political opinion as an unconscious and popular protest against the aggressive centralisation, which the Jacobinism of the first Empire had made so odious.

The Lily had always been to the ProvenÇals (who bore it in their national coat of arms) the symbol of a time when their customs, traditions and franchise were respected by the Government; but to think that our fathers wished to return to the abuses which obtained before the Revolution would be a great error, for it was Provence who sent Mirabeau to the Etats GÉnÉraux, and there was no part of France where the Revolution was carried on with more passionate fervour than in Provence.

The ancient city of Avignon is so steeped in bygone glories that it is impossible to take a step without awakening some memory of the past. Close to the spot where our school was situated once stood the Convent of Sainte-Claire, and it was in that convent chapel that Petrarch first beheld his Laura one April morning in 1327.

Our quarter had other associations in those days of a more lugubrious character, owing to the near proximity of the University and the Medical School. No little shoeblack or chimney-sweep could ever be induced to come and work at our school, for it was firmly believed that the students laid in wait to catch all the small boys, for the purpose of bleeding and skinning them, and afterwards dissecting their corpses.

It was not less interesting for us, children of villages for the most part, when we went out to ramble about in the labyrinth of alleys that formed our neighbourhood, such as the “Little Paradise,” which had been a “hot quarter,” and was so still, or the Street of Brandy, or of the “Cat,” or the “Cock,” or the Devil! But what a difference between this and the beautiful valleys all flowered with asphodel, and the fine air, the peace and the liberty of St. Michel de Frigolet. Some days my heart would ache with home-sickness, and yet Monsieur Millet, who was a good devil at bottom, ended by taming me. He was from Caderousse, a farmer’s son, like myself, and he had a great admiration for the famous poem, “The Siege of Caderousse.” He knew it by heart, and sometimes, while explaining some grand fight of the Greeks or the Trojans, he would suddenly give a shake to his grey tuft of hair and exclaim:

“Now see, this is one of the finest bits of Virgil, isn’t it? Listen, my children, and you shall hear that Favre, the songster of the Siege of Caderousse, follows very close at Virgil’s heels.”

How they appealed to us, these recitations in our own tongue—so full of savour! The fat Millet would shout with laughter, and I, who had retained in my blood more than the others the honeyed essence of my childhood, found nothing gave me more pleasure than these fruits of my own country.

Monsieur Millet would go every day about five o’clock to read the news in the CafÉ Baretta, which he called the “CafÉ of talking animals.” It was kept, if I am not mistaken, by the uncle, or perhaps grandfather, of Mademoiselle Baretta of the ThÉatre-FranÇais; then, the next day, if he were in a good temper, he would give us an epitome, not without a touch of malice, of the eternal growling of the old politicians assembled there, who at that time talked of nothing but the “Little One,” as they called Henri V.

It was that year I made my first communion in the Church of Saint-Didier, and it was the bellringer Fanot, of whom Roumanille sang later in his “Cloche MontÉe,” who daily rang us in for the Catechism. Two months before the confirmation Monsieur Millet took us to the church to be catechised. And there, with the other boys and girls, who were also being prepared, we were ranged in rows on benches in the middle of the nave. Chance willed that I, being among the last row of boys, should find myself next a charming little girl placed in the first row of girls. She was called PraxÈde, and had cheeks like the first blush of a fresh rose. Children are queer things! We met every day, sitting next to each other, and without premeditation our elbows would touch, we would breathe in sympathy, whisper and shake over our little jokes till (the angels must have smiled to see it) we ended by actually being in love!

But what an innocent love! how full of mystic aspirations! Those same angels, if they feel for each other reciprocal affection, must know just such an emotion. We were both but twelve years old, the age of Beatrice when Dante first saw her, and it was the vision of this young budding maiden that evoked the “Paradise” of the great Florentine poet. There is an expression in our language exactly rendering this soul delight which intoxicates two young people in the first spring-time of youth, it signifies being of one accord, “nous nous agrÉions.” It is true we never met except in church, but the mere sight of each other filled our hearts with happiness. I smiled at her, she smiled back, our voices were united in the same songs of divine love, we made the same signs of grace, and our souls were uplifted by the same mysteries of a simple spontaneous faith. O dawn of love, blooming with a joy as innocent as the daisy by the clear brook! First fleeting dawn of pure love!

Still I can picture Mademoiselle PraxÈde, as I saw her for the last time—dressed all in white, crowned with a wreath of may, most sweet to look upon beneath her transparent veil, as she mounted the steps of the altar by my side, like a bride—lovely little bride of the Lamb.

Our confirmation once over, the episode was finished. Vainly, for long afterwards, when we passed down the Rue de la Lice, where she lived, my hungry eyes scanned the green shutters of the home of PraxÈde, but I never saw her again. She had been sent to a convent school. The thought that my sweet little friend of the rosy cheeks and charming smile was lost to me for ever gave me a disgust for everything in life, and I fell into a state of languor and melancholy.

When the holidays arrived and I returned to the farm, my mother found me pale and feverish, and decided, in order both to cure and to divert me, that I should go with her on a pilgrimage to Saint-Gent, the patron of all those suffering from fever.

To Saint-Gent is also attributed the power of sending rain, which makes him a sort of demi-god to the peasants on both sides of the Durance.

“I went to Saint-Gent before the Revolution,” said my father. “I was ten years old and I walked the whole way barefoot with my poor mother. But we had more faith in those days.” So we started one fine night in September, by the light of the moon, with Uncle BÉnoni, of whom I have already spoken, as driver.

Other pilgrims bound for the fÊte joined us from ChÂteau-Renard, from Noves, Thor, and from Pernes, their carts, covered like our own with canvas stretched over wooden hoops, formed a long procession down the road. Singing and shouting in chorus the canticle of Saint-Gent, a magnificent old tune—Gounod, by the way, introduced it into his opera of Mireille—we passed through the sleeping villages to the sound of cracking whips, and not till the following afternoon about four o’clock did we all arrive at the Gorge de Bausset, where, with “Long live Saint-Gent,” we descended. There, in the very place where the venerated hermit passed his days of penitence, the old people repeated to the younger ones all they had heard tell of the saint.

“Gent,” they said, “was one of us, the son of peasants, a fine youth from Monteux, who, at the age of fifteen, retired into the desert to consecrate himself to God. He tilled the earth with two cows. One day a wolf attacked and devoured one of his cows. Gent caught the wolf, and harnessing him to the plough, made him work, yoked with the other cow. Meanwhile at Monteux, since Gent departed, no rain had fallen for seven years, so the Montelaix said to his mother Imberti:

“Good woman, you must go and find your son and tell him that since he left us we have not had a drop of rain.”

The mother of Gent, by dint of searching and crying, at last found her son, here, where we are at this moment, in the Gorge de Bausset, and as his mother was thirsty, Gent pressed the steep rock with two of his fingers and two springs jetted forth, one of wine, the other of water. The spring of wine has dried up, but the water runs still, and it is as the hand of God for healing all bad fevers.

There are two yearly pilgrimages to the Hermitage of Saint-Gent. The first one, in May, is specially for the country people, the Montelaix, and they carry his statue from Monteux to Bausset, a pilgrimage of some six miles, made on foot in memory of the flight of the saint.

Here is the letter which Aubanel wrote to me in 1866, when he also made the pilgrimage.

“My dear Friend,—With Grivolas I have just returned from a pilgrimage to Saint-Gent. It is a wonderful, sublime, and poetical experience, and that nocturnal journey bearing the image of the saint has left on my soul a unique impression. The mayor lent us a carriage, and we followed with the pilgrims through fields and woods by the light of the moon, to the song of nightingales, from eight o’clock in the evening till past midnight. It was so impressive and mysterious—strange and beautiful—that one felt the tears start. Four youths lightly clothed in nankin, running like hares, flying like birds, set out with the sacred burden, preceded by a man on horseback, galloping and signalling their approach with pistol-shots. The people of the farms hurried out to see the saint pass, men, women, children and old people, stopped the carriers, kissing the statue, praying, weeping, gesticulating. Then off went the bearers again more swiftly than ever, while the women cried after them:

“‘Happy journey, boys.’

“And the men added:

“‘May the good saint uphold you.’

“And so they run till they pant for breath. Oh! that journey through the night, and that little troop going forth into the darkness under the protection of God and Saint-Gent, into the desert, no one knew whither. I assure you there was in all this a profound note of poetry that made an indelible impression on my mind.”

The second pilgrimage of Saint-Gent takes place in September, and it was to that we went. Now as Saint-Gent had only been canonised by the voice of the people, the priests take very little notice of him, and the townsfolk still less. It is the people of the soil who recognise the right of the good saint to be canonised, he who was simply one of themselves, spoke and worked even as they, and who, with but moderate delays, sends them the rain they pray for, and cures their fevers. His cult is so fervent that, in the narrow gorge dedicated to the legend of his memory, sometimes as many as 20,000 pilgrims are assembled.

Tradition records that Saint-Gent slept on a bed of stone with his head down and his feet up; so all the pilgrims, in a spirit of devotion not unmixed with gaiety, go and lie like fallen trees in the bed of Saint-Gent, which is a hollow formed in the sloping rock; the women also place themselves there, carefully holding each other’s skirts in a decorous position.

We, too, lay in the stone bed like the others, and I went with my mother to see the “Spring of the Wolf,” and the “Spring of the Cow.” Then on to the Chapel of Saint-Gent, surrounded by a group of old walnut-trees, and containing his tomb. And lastly, we visited the “terrible rock,” as the old canticle calls it, from whence flows the miraculous fount which cures fever.

Full of wonder at all these tales, these beliefs and visions, my soul intoxicated by the scent of the plants and the sight of this place, still hallowed by the impress of the saint’s feet, with the beautiful faith of my twelve years I drank freely of the spring, and—people may think what they please—from that moment I had no more fever. Therefore do not be astonished that the daughter of the FÉlibre, the poor Mireille, when lost in the Crau and dying of thirst, calls on the good Saint-Gent to come to her rescue. (Mireille, Song viii.)

On my return to Avignon, a new arrangement was made for carrying on our classes. We continued to live at the school of the fat Monsieur Millet, but were taken twice a day to the Royal College, to attend the University course as day scholars, and it was in this way that for five years (1843-1847) I continued my education.

The masters of the college were not then, as now, young professors with degrees and coats of the latest cut. The professional chairs were occupied in our day by some of the drastic greybeards of the old University. For example, in the fourth class we had the worthy Monsieur Blanc, formerly a sergeant-major in the Imperial army, who, when our replies were inadequate, promptly hurled at our heads the first book he could lay hands on. In another class, Monsieur Lamy, a rabid classic, who held in abhorrence the innovations of Victor Hugo; while for rhetoric we had a rough patriot named Monsieur Chaulaire, who detested the English, and with vehement emotion, banging his fist on the desk, was wont to recite to us the warlike songs of BÉranger.

One year I remember specially, for how it happened I have no idea, but at the distribution of prizes in the church of the college, in presence of the assembled fine world of Avignon, I found myself carrying off all the prizes, even that for conduct. Every time my name was called, I timidly advanced to fetch the beautiful book and the laurel crown from the hand of the headmaster, then, returning through the applauding crowd, I threw my trophies in my mother’s lap, and every one turned to look with curiosity and astonishment at the beautiful ProvenÇale who, her face beaming with happiness but still calm and dignified, piled up in her rush basket the laurels of her son. Afterwards, at the farm—sic transit gloria mundi—these aforesaid laurels were placed on the chimney-piece behind the pots.

Whatever was done, however, in the way of education to distract me from my natural bent, the love of my own language remained always my ruling passion, and many circumstances tended to nurture it.

On one occasion, having read, in I forget what journal, some ProvenÇal verses of Jasmin to LoÏsa Puget, and recognising that there were poets who still glorified the langue d’Oc, seized with a fine enthusiasm, I did likewise for the celebrated hairdresser, and composed an appreciation which begins thus:

but, poor little chap, I received no answer. Of course I know the poor ’prentice verses deserved none, but—no use denying it—this disdain hurt me, and when in after life I in my turn received such offerings, remembering my own discomfort, I always felt it a duty to acknowledge them with courtesy.

About the age of fourteen, the longing for my native fields and the sound of my native tongue grew on me to such a degree that it ended by making me quite ill from home-sickness.

Like the prodigal son, I said to myself, “How much happier are the servants and shepherds of our farm, down there, who eat the good bread that my mother provides; the friends of my childhood, too, my comrades of Maillane, who live at liberty in the country, labouring, sowing, reaping, and gathering olives, beneath the blessed sun of God, than I who drudge between four walls, over translations and compositions.”

My sorrow was mixed with a strong distaste for the unreal world where I was immured, and with a constant drawing towards some vague ideal which I discerned in the blue distance of the horizon. So it fell out that one day while reading, I think, the Magazin des Familles, I came upon a description of the silent and contemplative life of the Monks of La Chartreuse at Valbonne.

Thereupon I became possessed with the idea of this conventual life, and escaping from the school one fine afternoon I set out alone, determined and desperate, on the road to Pont Saint-Esprit, which winds along the banks of the RhÔne, for I knew Valbonne was somewhere in that neighbourhood.

“There,” I said to myself, “I will go and knock at the door of the convent, imploring and weeping until they consent to admit me. Then once inside I will roam all day, in bliss, among the trees of the forest—I will steep myself in thoughts of God and sanctify myself as did the good Saint-Gent.”

Then suddenly a thought arrested me:

“And thy mother,” I said to myself, “to whom, miserable boy, thou hast not even bidden farewell, and who, when she learns thou hast disappeared, will seek thee by hill and by dale, poor woman, weeping disconsolate as did the mother of Gent!”

Turning about, with a heavy heart and hesitating steps I made my way back to the farm, in order to embrace my parents once more before forsaking the world; but the nearer I drew to the paternal home, the faster my monkish ideas and proud resolution melted in the warmth of my filial love, as a ball of snow dissolves before the fire. At the door of the farm, where I arrived late, my mother cried out in astonishment at the sight of me:

“But why have you left your school before the holidays?”

And I, already ashamed of my flight, replied in a broken voice: “I am home-sick—I cannot go back to that fat old Millet, where one has only carrots to eat.”

But the next day our shepherd, Ronquet, took me back to my abhorred jail, with the promise, however, that I should be liberated at the end of the term.