The following year (1856), at the time of the fÊte of Sainte-Agathe, patroness of Maillane, I received a visit from a well-known poet in Paris. Fate, or rather the good star of the FÉlibres, brought him just in the propitious hour. It was Adolphe Dumas—a fine figure of a man some fifty years old, of an Æsthetic pallor, with long hair turning grey and a brown moustache like a lap-dog. His black eyes were full of fire, and he had a habit of accompanying his ringing voice with a fine waving gesture of the hand. He was tall, but lame, dragging a crippled leg as he walked. He reminded one of a cypress of Provence agitated by the wind.

“Is it you, then, Monsieur Mistral, who write verses in the ProvenÇal?” he began to me in a joking tone as he held out his hand.

“Yes, it is I,” I replied. “At your service, Monsieur.”

“Certainly, I hope that you can serve me. The Minister for Public Instruction, Monsieur Fortoul, of Digne, has given me the commission to come and collect the popular songs of Provence, such as ‘Le Mousse de Marseille,’ ‘La Belle Margoton,’ ‘Les Noces du Papillon,’ and if you know of any, I am here to collect them.”

And talking over this matter I sang to him, as it happened, the serenade of Magali, freshly arranged for the poem of Mireille.

Adolphe Dumas started up all alert.

“But where did you find that pearl?” he cried.

“It is part,” I answered, “of a ProvenÇal poem in twelve cantos to which I am just giving the finishing touches.”

“Oh, these good Provencaux!” he laughed. “You are always the same, determined to keep your tattered language, like the donkeys who will walk along the borders of the roads to graze upon thistles. It is in French, my dear friend, it is in the language of Paris that we must sing of our Provence to-day if we wish to be heard. Now, listen to this:

“But come, tell me, since poem there is, tell me something of your ProvenÇal production.”

I then read him something out of Mireille, I forget what.

“Ah! if you are going to talk like that,” said Dumas after my recitation, “I take off my hat and greet the source of a new poetry, of an indigenous poetry hitherto unknown. It teaches me, who have left Provence for thirty years, and who thought her language dead, that behind this dialect used by the common people, the half-bourgeois and the half-ladies, there exists a second language, that of Dante and Petrarch. But take care to follow their methods, which did not consist, as some think, in using the language as they found it, or in making a mixture of the dialects of Florence, Bologna and Milan. They collected the oil and then constructed a language which they made perfect while generalising it. All who preceded the Latin writers of the great time of Augustus, with the exception of Terence, were but trash. Of the popular tongue, use only a few white straws with the grain that may be there. I feel certain that you have the requisite sap running in your youthful veins to ensure success. Already I begin to see the possibility of the rebirth of a language founded upon Latin, which shall be beautiful and sonorous as the best Italian.”

The story of Adolphe Dumas was like a fairy-tale. Born of the people, his parents kept a little inn between Orgon and Cabane. Dumas had a sister named Laura, beautiful as the day and innocent as a spring of fresh water. One day, lo and behold, some strolling players passed through the village, and gave in the evening a performance at the little inn. One of them played the part of a prince. The gold tinsel of his costume glittering beneath the big lanterns gave him, in the eyes of poor little Laura, the appearance of a king’s son. Innocent, alas! as many a one before, Laura allowed herself, so the story goes, to be beguiled and carried off by this prince of the open road. She travelled with the company and embarked at Marseilles. Too soon she learnt her mad mistake, and not daring to return home, in desperation she took the coach for Paris, where she arrived one morning in torrents of rain. There she found herself on the street, alone and destitute. A gentleman, driving past, noticed the young ProvenÇale in tears. Stopping his carriage he asked her: “My pretty child, what is the matter—why do you weep so bitterly?”

In her naÏve way Laura told him her story. The gentleman, who was rich, suddenly touched and taken with her beauty and simplicity, made her get into his carriage, took her to a convent, had her carefully educated, and then married her. But the beautiful bride, who had a noble heart, did not forget her own relations. She sent for her little brother Adolphe to Paris, and gave him a good education, and that is how Adolphe Dumas, a poet by nature and an enthusiast, one day found himself in the midst of the literary movement of 1830. Verses of all sorts, dramas, comedies, poems, bubbled forth one after another from his seething brain: “La CitÉ des Hommes,” “La Mort de Faust et de Don Juan,” “Le Camp des CroisÉs,” “Provence,” “Mademoiselle de la ValliÈre,” “L’Ecole des Familles,” “Les Servitudes Volontaires,” &c. But, just as in the army, though all may do their duty every one does not receive the Legion of Honour, in spite of his pluck and the comparative success of his plays in the Paris theatres, the poet Dumas, like our drummer-boy of Arcole, remained always the undecorated soldier. This it was, no doubt, which made him say later on in ProvenÇal:

“At forty years and more, when every one is angling, still I dip my bread in the poor man’s soup. Let us be content if we have a soul at peace, a pure heart and clean hands. ‘What has he earned?’ the world will ask, ‘He carries his head erect.’ ‘What does he do?’ ‘He does his duty.’”

But if Dumas had gained no special laurels, he had won the esteem of the most distinguished brothers-in-arms, and Hugo, Lamartine, BÉranger, De Vigny, the great Dumas, Jules Janin, Mignet, Barbey d’Aurevilly were among his friends.

Adolphe Dumas, with his ardent temperament, his experience of struggling days in Paris, and the memory of his childhood on the Durance, came to the determination to issue a passenger’s ticket to FÉlibrige between Avignon and Paris.

My poem of Provence was at last finished, though not yet printed, when one day my friend FrÉdÉric LegrÉ, a young Marseillais who formerly frequented Font-SÉgugne, said to me:

“I am going to Paris—will you come too?”

I accepted the invitation, and it was thus that on the spur of the moment, for the first time, I visited Paris, where I stayed one week. I had, needless to say, brought my manuscript, and after spending the first two days in sight-seeing and admiring, from Notre-Dame to the Louvre, and from the Place VendÔme to the great Arc de Triomphe, we went, as was proper, and paid our respects to the good Dumas.

“Well, and that Mireille,” he asked me, “is she finished?”

“She is finished,” I said, “and here she is—in manuscript.”

“Come now, since you are here, you will read me a song.”

And when I had read the first canto, “Go on!” said Dumas.

I read the second, then the third, then the fourth canto.

“That is enough for to-day,” said the good man. “Come to-morrow at the same time, we will continue the reading; but this much I may assure you,” he added, “if your work keeps up to this level, you may win finer laurels than at present you have any idea of.”

I returned the next day and read four more cantos, and the day after we finished the poem.

That same day (August 26, 1856) Adolphe Dumas wrote to the editor of the Gazette de France the following letter:

“The Gazette du Midi has already made known to the Gazette de France the arrival in Paris of young Mistral, the poet of Provence. Who is this Mistral? No one knows anything of him. When I am asked, I answer fearing my words should find no credence, so surprising will be my statements at a time when the prevalence of imitation poetry makes one believe that all true poetry and poets are dead. In ten years’ time the Academy will, when all the world has already done so, recognise another glory to French literature. The clock of the Institute is often an hour behind the century, but I wish to be the first to discover one who may be truly called the Virgil of Provence, and who, like the shepherd of Mantua, sings to his countrymen songs worthy of Gallus and of Scipio. Many have long desired for our beautiful country of the south, Roman both in speech and religion, the poem which shall express in her own tongue the sacred beliefs and pure customs of our land. I have the poem in my hands, it consists of twelve songs. It is signed FrÉdÉric Mistral, of the village of Maillane, and I countersign it with my word of honour, which I have never given falsely, and with the full weight of my responsibility.”

This letter was received with jeers by certain papers. “The mistral is incarnated, it appears, in a poem. We shall see if it will be anything except wind.”

But Dumas, content with the effect of the bomb, said, clasping my hand:

“Now, my dear fellow, return to Avignon and get your Mireille printed. We have thrown down the glove, now let the critics talk. They must each one have their say in turn.”

Before I left Paris my devoted compatriot wished to present me to Lamartine, his friend, and this is how the great man recounts the visit in his “Cours familier de LittÉrature” (quarantiÈme entretien, 1859):

“As the sun was setting, Adolphe Dumas entered my room, followed by a fine, modest-looking young man, dressed with a sober elegance which recalled the lover of Laura, when he brushed his black tunic and combed his smooth hair in the city of Avignon. It was FrÉdÉric Mistral, the young village poet, destined to become in Provence, what Burns the ploughman was in Scotland, the Homer of his native land.

“His expression was straightforward, modest and gentle, with nothing in it of that proud tension of the features or of that vacancy of the eye which too often characterises those men of vanity rather than genius, styled popular poets. He had the comeliness of sincerity, he pleased, he interested, he touched; one recognised in his masculine beauty the son of one of those beautiful Arlesiennes, living statues of Greece, who still move in our south.

“Mistral sat down without ceremony at my dinner-table in Paris, according to the laws of ancient hospitality, as I would have seated myself at the farm table of his mother at Maillane. The dinner was quiet, the conversation intimate and frank. The evening passed quickly and pleasantly in my little garden about the size of the kerchief of Mireille, to the song of blackbirds in the fresh cool night air.

“The young man recited some verses in the sweet nervous idiom of Provence, which combines the Latin pronunciation with the grace of Attica and the serenity of Tuscany. My knowledge of the Latin dialects, which I spoke up to the age of twelve in the mountains of my country, made these fine idioms intelligible to me. The verses of Mistral were liquid and melodious, they pleased without intoxicating me. The genius of the young man was not there, the medium was too restricted for his soul; he needed, as did Jasmin, that other singer of indigenous growth, his epic poem in which to spread his wings. He returned to his village, there at his mother’s hearth and beside the flocks to find his last inspirations. On taking leave, he promised to send me the first printed copy of his Mireille.”

After this memorable occasion I paid my farewell respects to Lamartine. He lived at that time on the ground floor in the Rue de la Ville-l’EvÊque. It was evening. Burdened with his debts and somewhat forsaken, the great man drowsed on a sofa, smoking a cigar, while some visitors spoke in low voices around him.

All at once a servant came to announce that a Spaniard, a harpist called Herrera, asked permission to play some of the music of his country before Monsieur de Lamartine.

“Let him come in,” said the poet.

When the harpist had played his tunes, Lamartine, in a whisper to his niece, Madame de Cessia, asked if there was any money in the drawers of his bureau.

“There are still two louis,” she replied.

“Give them to Herrera,” said the kind-hearted Lamartine.

I returned to Provence to get my poem printed, and so soon as it issued from the printing office of Seguin at Avignon, I directed the first proof to Lamartine, who wrote to Reboul[17] the following letter:

“I have read MirÈio. Nothing until now has appeared of such national, vital, inimitable growth of the South. There is a virtue in the sun of Provence. I have received such a thrust both in the spirit and the heart that I was impelled to write a discourse on the poem. Tell this to Monsieur Mistral. Since the Homerics of Archipel, no such spring of primitive poetry has gushed forth. I cried, even as you did, ‘It is Homer!’”

Adolphe Dumas wrote me:

I wish to record here a very singular fact of maternal intuition. I had given to my mother a copy of MirÈio, but without having spoken to her of Lamartine’s opinion, of which I was still ignorant. At the end of the day, when I thought she had made acquaintance with the work, I asked her what she thought of it, and she answered me, deeply moved:

“A very strange thing happened to me when I opened thy book: a flash of light, like a star, dazzled me suddenly, and I was obliged to delay the reading until later!”

One may believe it or no, but I have always thought that this vision of my beloved and sainted mother was a very real sign of the influence of Sainte-Estelle, otherwise of the star that had presided at the foundation of FÉlibrige.

The fortieth discourse of the “Cours familier de LittÉrature” appeared a month later (1859) under the title of “The Appearance of an Epic Poem in Provence.” Lamartine devoted eighty pages to the poem of Mireille, and this glorification was the crowning event of the numberless articles which had welcomed the rustic epic in the press of Provence, of Languedoc, and of Paris. I testified my gratitude in the ProvenÇal quatrain, which I inscribed at the head of the second edition.

TO LAMARTINE.

And the following is the elegy that I published on the death of the great man, ten years later (1869).

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF LAMARTINE.[18]