Frédéric Mistral | Page 5

was born of that marriage."
His father's lands were extensive, and a great number of men were required to work them. The poem, _Mirèio_, is filled with pictures of the sort of life led in the country of Maillane. Of his father he says that he towered above them all, in stature, in wisdom, and in nobleness of bearing. He was a handsome old man, dignified in language, firm in command, kind to the poor about him, austere with himself alone. The same may be said of the poet to-day. He is a strikingly handsome man, vigorous and active, exceedingly gracious and simple in manner. His utter lack of affectation is the more remarkable, in view of the fact that he has been for years an object of adulation, and lives in constant and close contact with a population of peasants.
His schooling began at the age of nine, but the boy played truant so frequently that he was sent to boarding-school in Avignon. Here he had a sad time of it, and seems especially to have felt the difference of language. Teachers and pupils alike made fun of his patois, for which he had a strong attachment, because of the charm of the songs his mother sung to him. Later he studied well, however, and became filled with a love of Virgil and Homer. In them he found pictures of life that recalled vividly the labors, the ways, and the ideas of the Maillanais. At this time, too, he attempted a translation, in Proven?al, of the first eclogue of Virgil, and confided his efforts to a school-mate, Anselme Mathieu, who became his life-long friend and one of the most active among the Félibres.
It was at this school, in 1845, that he formed his friendship with Roumanille, who had come there as a teacher. It is not too much to say that the revival of the Proven?al language grew out of this meeting. Roumanille had already written his poems, Li Margarideto (The Daisies). "Scarcely had he shown me," says Mistral, "in their spring-time freshness, these lovely field-flowers, when a thrill ran through my being and I exclaimed, 'This is the dawn my soul awaited to awaken to the light!'" Mistral had read some Proven?al, but at that time the dialect was employed merely in derision; the writers used the speech itself as the chief comic element in their productions. The poems of Jasmin were as yet unknown to him. Roumanille was the first in the Rhone country to sing the poetry of the heart. Master and pupil became firm friends and worked together for years to raise the home-speech to the dignity of a literary language.
At seventeen Mistral returned home, and began a poem in four cantos, that he has never published; though portions of it are among the poems of Lis Isclo d'Or_ and in the notes of Mirèio_. This poem is called Li Meissoun (Harvest). His family, seeing his intellectual superiority, sent him to Aix to study law. Here he again met Mathieu, and they made up for the aridity of the Civil Code by devoting themselves to poetry in Proven?al.
In 1851 the young man returned to the mas_, a licencié en droit_, and his father said to him: "Now, my dear son, I have done my duty; you know more than ever I learned. Choose your career; I leave you free." And the poet tells us he threw his lawyer's gown to the winds and gave himself up to the contemplation of what he so loved,--the splendor of his native Provence.
Through Roumanille he came to know Aubanel, Croustillat, and others. They met at Avignon, full of youthful enthusiasm, and during this period Mistral, encouraged by his friends, worked upon his greatest poem, _Mirèio_. In 1854, on the 21st of May, the Félibrige was founded by the seven poets,--Joseph Roumanille, Paul Giéra, Théodore Aubanel, Eugène Garcin, Anselme Mathieu, Frédéric Mistral, Alphonse Tavan. In 1868, Garcin published a violent attack upon the Félibres, accusing them, in the strongest language, of seeking to bring about a political separation of southern France from the rest of the country. This apostasy was a cause of great grief to the others, and Garcin's name was stricken from the official list of the founders of the Félibrige, and replaced by that of Jean Brunet. Mistral, in the sixth canto of _Mirèio_, addresses in eloquent verse his comrades in the Proven?al Pléiade, and there we still find the name of Garcin.
Tù' nfin, de quau un vènt de flamo?Ventoulo, emporto e fouito l'amo?Garcin, o fiéu ardènt dóu manescau d'Alen!
(And finally, thou whose soul is stirred and swept and whipped by a wind of flame, Garcin, ardent son of the smith of Alleins.)
This attack upon the Félibrige was the first of the kind ever made. Many years later, Garcin