Mistral's last extended
poetical
work up to
the date of this notice,-'Le Poème du Rhône) (The Poem of the
Rhône), eagerly expected during many years of slow completion.
the date of this notice,-'Le Poème du Rhône) (The Poem of the
Rhône), eagerly expected during many years of slow completion.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v17 - Mai to Mom
10087 (#515) ##########################################
MIRABEAU
10087
to empires has not yet appeared, pure and unmixed, upon a
throne. To you it belongs to place it there; this sublime glory
is reserved for you. Your predecessor gained battles enough,
perhaps too many; he has too much fatigued Fame's hundred
tongues, and exhausted military glory, for several reigns,— nay,
for several centuries.
With much greater facility you
may create a glory more pure and not less brilliant, which shall
be wholly your own. Frederick conquered the admiration of man-
kind, but he never won their love.
This love you may
entirely possess.
Do not, ah! do not neglect the treasure which Providence has
spread in your path. Deserve the blessings of the poor, the love
of your people, the respect of Europe, and the good wishes of
wise men.
Be just, be good, and you will be great and happy!
You wish to obtain, dread sir, the title of Great; but you
wish to receive it from the mouth of history, and from the suf-
frage of ages to come,- you would despise it from the mouths
of your courtiers. If you do that which the son of your slave
could do, ten times a day, better than yourself, they will tell you
that you have performed an extraordinary action! If you suffer
your passions to mislead you, they will say that you are right!
If you are as lavish of the blood of your subjects as of the waters
of your rivers, again will they tell you that you are right! If
you barter for gold the air that preserves life, they will say that
you are right! If you revenge yourself - you who are so power-
ful — they will continue to tell you that you are right!
They said the same thing when Alexander, in a drunken fit,
plunged his dagger into the bosom of his friend; they said the
same thing when Nero murdered his mother.
If you indefatigably perform your duties, without ever putting
off till the following day the burthen of the present day; if by
great and fruitful principles you can simplify these duties, and
reduce them within the capacity of a single man; if you give
your subjects all the freedom they can bear; if you can protect
every kind of property, and facilitate useful labor; if you terrify
petty oppressors who in your name would prevent men from
doing, for their own advantage, that which injures not their fel-
lows,-a unanimous shout will bless your authority, and render
it more sacred and more powerful. Everything will then be easy
for you, because the will and the strength of all will be united
to your own strength and your own will, and your labor will
## p. 10088 (#516) ##########################################
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MIRABEAU
SOV-
become every day less severe. Nature has made labor necessary
to man. It gives him also this precious advantage, that change
of labor is to him not only a relaxation but a source of pleasure.
Who, more easily than a king, can live in strict accordance with
this order of nature? A philosopher has said that "no man feels
such lassitude of spirit as a king”; he should have said, "a
slothful king. ” How could lassitude of mind fall upon a
ereign who did his duty ? Could he ever keep up his vigor of
intellect and preserve his health so well as by shielding himself,
under the pursuit of labor, from the disgust which every man of
sense must feel among those idle talkers, those inventors of ful-
some praises, who study their prince for no other purpose than
to corrupt, blind, and rob him ? Their sole art is to render him
indifferent and feeble, or else impatient, rude, and idle.
Your subjects will enjoy your virtues, which alone can preserve
and improve their patrimony. Your courtiers will cultivate your
defects, by which alone they can support their influence and their
expectations.
It is worthy of you not to govern too
much.
[I recommend the immediate] abolition of military slavery;
that is to say, the obligation imposed upon every Prussian to
serve as a soldier, from the age of eighteen years to sixty
and more: that dreadful law arising from the necessities of an
iron age and a semi-barbarous country; that law dishonoring a
nation without whom your ancestors would have been nothing
but slaves, more or less decorated with empty honors. This
law does not produce you a single soldier more than you would
obtain by a wiser system, which may enable you to recruit the
Prussian army in a manner that shall elevate men's hearts, add
to the public spirit, and possess the forms of freedom, instead of
those of brutishness and slavery. Throughout Europe, and more
especially in your Majesty's dominions, one of the most useful
instincts upon which patriotism could be founded is stupidly
lost. Men are forced to go to the battle-field like cattle to the
slaughter-house; whilst nothing is easier than to make the pub-
lic service an object of emulation and glory.
Be also the first sovereign in whose dominions every man
willing to work shall find employment. Everything that breathes
must obtain its nourishment by labor. This is the first law of
nature, anterior to all human convention: it is the connecting
bond of all society; for every man who finds nothing but a
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refusal to his offer to work in exchange for his subsistence
becomes the natural and lawful enemy of other men, and has a
right of private war against society. In the country, as in cities,
let workshops be everywhere opened at your Majesty's cost; let
all men, of what nation soever, find their maintenance in the
price of their labor; let your subjects there learn the value of
time and activity. Instruction, you are aware, is one of the most
important of a sovereign's duties, and likewise one of his richest
treasures. Entire liberty of the press ought to be one of your
first acts: not only because any restraint upon this liberty is a
hindrance to the enjoyment of natural rights, but because every
obstacle to the advancement of knowledge is an evil, a great evil;
especially for you, who are debarred thereby from obtaining,
through the medium of printing, a knowledge of the truth, and
of public opinion,- that prime minister of good kings.
Let information be circulated through your dominions. Read,
and let others read. If light were rising on all sides toward
the throne, would you invoke darkness? Oh, no! for it would
be in vain. You would lose too much, without even obtaining
the fatal success of extinguishing it. You will read, you will
begin a noble association with books. They have destroyed cruel
.
and disgraceful prejudices, they have smoothed the road before
you, they have served you even before you were born. You will
not be ungrateful toward the accumulated works of beneficent
genius.
You will read, and you will protect those who write; for with-
out them what would become of the human species, and what
would it be? They will instruct, they will assist, they will talk
to you without seeing you. Without approaching your throne,
they will introduce there the august truth.
This truth will enter
your palace alone, without escort, and without affected dignity; it
will bear neither title nor ribands, but will be invisible and dis-
interested.
You will read, but you will be desirous that your subjects
should also read. You will not think you have done all by re-
cruiting your academies from foreign countries: you will found
schools, you will multiply them, especially in country places, and
you will endow them. You would not reign in darkness; and you
will say, "Let there be light! ” The light will burst forth at your
voice; and its halo, playing round your brow, will form a more
glorious ornament than all the laurels won by conquerors.
## p. 10090 (#518) ##########################################
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MIRABEAU
I trust, dread sir, that my candor will not displease you. Medi-
tate on these respectful lines, and say:-
« This is what will never be admitted to me as true, and is
the very reverse of what I shall be told every day. The boldest
offer to kings nothing but veiled truths, whilst here I see truth
quite naked
This is far preferable to that venal incense
with which I am suffocated by versifiers, and panegyrists of the
Academy, who seized upon me in my cradle, and will scarcely
leave me when I am in my coffin. I am a man before I am a
king. Why should I be offended at being treated as a man?
Why should I be offended with a foreigner, who wants noth-
ing of me, and will soon quit my court never more to see me,
for speaking to me without disguise ? He points out to me that
which his eyes, his experience, his studies, and his understanding
have collected; he gives me, without expectation of reward, those
true and free counsels of which no condition of man is so much
in want as kings. He has no interest in deceiving me, and can
have none but good intentions.
Let me examine atten-
tively what he proposes; for the mere common-sense and the
simple candor of a man who has no other pursuit than the culti-
vation of his reason and his intellect, may perhaps be as good as
the old routine, and trickery, and forms, and diplomatic illusions,
and the ridiculous dogmas, of statesmen by profession. ”
A LETTER TO VITRY
Yºu
ou know the plan of the journal I purpose establishing, but
others will not understand it. It is to be founded upon the
idea — novel perhaps, and which in my opinion is not with-
out its usefulness — of noticing old books, as the ordinary jour-
nals notice new ones. To abridge and select is now, assuredly,
the most urgent want of science and letters. To preserve is of
a usefulness less direct, perhaps, or rather less abundant. Never-
theless, in proportion as taste and erudition pass away; in pro-
portion as the mania of writing becomes more contagious; in
proportion to the ardor in publishing, the haste with which books
are published, the mania or necessity of sacrificing to the taste
of the day, to the coryphei of the times, to the pretension of
being free from prejudice — which, in point of fact, is scarcely
## p. 10091 (#519) ##########################################
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10091
anything better than substituting one prejudice for another; - in
proportion, I say, as all these diseases gain upon us, and increase,
do we too much neglect the exertions of our predecessors, who,
although it should be true that we surpass them in the talent of
bringing out, ought not the less to attract our attention, in order
that we may set in an elegant framework that which they have
clumsily enchased. I say then that this article will yield some-
thing; and I invoke your researches in the works of our philolo-
gers of the sixteenth century, our learned of the seventeenth, our
collections and our compilations of all ages, but that in which no
books were made except with stolen fragments, well or ill-stitched
together, no tragedies except with old hemistichs.
You know that another of my projects is to give in successive
parts a work on the academic collections, more especially that
entitled Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-
lettres. My plan here is to take the interesting papers of the
collection, and unite them by amalgamating and blending them
together, by clearing and pruning, and criticizing them one by
another; and to draw from this chaos all that is worthy of the
attention of philosophers, men of letters, and men of the world,
without crushing them by the weight of a fastidious erudition.
This is an undertaking the want of which is generally felt, and
its utility incontestable.
I intend to include speculative politics, finance, etc. ; and the
little I shall take from recent literature is my own affair. I
say “speculative politics” because, although I may be strongly
solicited, I will never write what Linguet so ridiculously calls
annals. ” The trade of a hussar no longer suits me.
even in this application, compatible with self-respect; for is there
not great rashness in giving intelligence of what passes at a dis-
tance, and passing judgment upon it, whilst daily experience
shows how difficult it is to obtain information of what is passing
close to us?
The art of printing has so greatly facilitated the means of
instruction that science has become a very common commodity.
But the mind of man may be improved ad infinitum. To render
the road to improvement easier, and to make the human intel-
lect advance with rapid strides in its progress of discovery,- to
engender new ideas, and make our exertions more fruitful, — a
mode is wanting to abridge study and avoid repetitions; placing
the studious man, especially the man of genius, at the point
(
It is not,
## p. 10092 (#520) ##########################################
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MIRABEAU
whence he is to start. If, for instance, he who appeared desirous
of seeking new discoveries were to spend his time in studying
the Epicycles of Ptolemy, or the Vortices of Descartes, he should
be spoken to in the following words: “This is the point we have
reached: Kepler, Newton, Claireau, Euler, etc. , have guessed,
demonstrated, and investigated this branch of science; and it
is from the point of their discoveries that you must try to
advance. ” Is this not the case with all sciences ?
FROM THE LETTERS
K
.
INGS who raise themselves only by things, and whom things
instruct badly,- because they almost always bend to the
monarch's will, passions, and opinions, - would perhaps
appear the most stupid of human beings if it were known how
little knowledge and how few ideas they generally have. Every
rational saying that escapes them is preserved; which is assur-
edly the best possible proof that such sayings are not very
numerous.
If I speak only of Paris, because at court nothing is spoken
of but Paris, it is not less true that the wants of this city are
the least urgent of any, and that as much care must be taken
not to create new paupers as to relieve those who already exist.
With regard to the latter, it would be at least necessary to give
to all the parish priests in the kingdom a sufficient income
to live; for they will not aid your poor if they are themselves
in poverty. The curés in some provinces - in Brittany, for
instance — have scarcely three hundred livres a year. What
necessity is there for the Archbishop of Auch to have 500,000
livres a year? Not but he makes a good use of it. Arch-
bishop Apchon is one of the most respectable prelates in the
kingdom; but he is mortal. The diocese of Cambrai has not
always had a Fénelon. When shall a portion of these enormous
revenues be taken and distributed among all the curés in the
kingdom ? Madame Louise has just obtained 30,000 livres a year
in corn and land, to be taken from the abbey of St. Germain,
for the support of the Carmelites of the kingdom. Assuredly
corn would grow equally well if there were no Carmelites in
France. But 30,000 livres a year, distributed among the poor
curés of the kingdom, would suffice to give, in a year of dearth,
the indispensably necessary to a great number of honest poor.
## p. 10093 (#521) ##########################################
MIRABEAU
10093
It is more than time to finish this long and shapeless collec-
tion of all sorts of dreams. You know my principles and opin-
ions sufficiently well to have no doubt that I have made a great
sacrifice to etiquette, to habit, and to prejudice, by fixing your
view upon the metropolis alone. The rest of the kingdom is a
stranger land to the great, which is the worst of evils. I wished
to show you how many useful and great things you did not do,
even in the place where you constantly reside. But would not
traveling amuse your illustrious friend-or her royal husband,
who, if he remain at Versailles, will never complete his education
either as a man or as a king? What a sad existence is that of
sovereigns! They are shut up within a circle of forty leagues
in diameter, the radii of which they perambulate as if by a con-
stant oscillation. The active correspondence between the King
of Spain and Louis XV. during twenty years is curious. They
wrote to each other every day in the same terms. The King of
Spain wrote: "At five o'clock I left St. Ildefonso, and the ren-
dezvous for the chase was at the Round of St. Anthony. ” The
same day Louis XV. wrote from Versailles: “At ten o'clock I
went to the Carrefour des Rossignols, at Compiègne, etc. ” And
this went on during twenty years.
Each monarch had his map,
and followed the route of the other, as if they had been learned
geographers studying Cook's voyages !
Let the Queen imitate her brother's example; let her travel,
and excite her husband to travel likewise, without pomp- for
pomp tends only to ruin, tire, and deceive. Let her travel.
Alas! very near the spot where the ostentation of wealth and
luxury insults the misery of the people, the King and Queen will
see, learn, and feel that which ministers and courtiers never tell
them!
The wealth of a country consists solely in its agriculture.
From it the population, and consequently the strength, of a State
are derived. Colbert, to whom so many just reproaches may be
made, was wrongfully accused when it was stated that he con-
cerned himself about nothing but manufactures. It must be
admitted that he rendered several ordinances favorable to agri-
culture. One of the most celebrated, promulgated the year
before his death, and rendered in favor of Alsace, provides that
«all persons who will occupy empty and vague lands may culti-
vate them to their own profit, and use them in full property. ”
Colbert, just before he died, contemplated making this ordinance
## p. 10094 (#522) ##########################################
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MIRABEAU
general throughout the kingdom: for he perceived what is very
evident, that the King has a full quarter of his kingdom to con-
quer from enemies termed heaths, downs, and so forth; and that
it is necessary to plow with one hand whilst the other prunes,
in order soon after to cut down the parasitical and voracious tree
of fiscality.
Conventicles of monks should be established in the most
uncultivated parts of the kingdom, to do there that which they
did a thousand years ago in different places. Monks can be
.
useful to society in no other way. These conventicles must be
dispersed in the most barren spots, according to the system of
the primitive church, and there supported during the time neces.
sary, by the profits of the newly cultivated lands, which might
afterwards be added to the mass of ecclesiastical property in
the kingdom. By such means the monks would be usefully em-
ployed, the waste lands put into cultivation, the State enriched,
and no one would have a right to complain.
But not only must the lands be cultivated, but the inhabitants
ſikewise. And why should not a former measure be adopted
which time has justified ?
In 1769, married men announcing a decided capacity for a
trade were selected from different families, and sent to Paris for
a year.
The circumstance of these men being married was con-
sidered a security for their return. Thus the farrier was sent
to Alfort under Bourgelat, the miller to Corbeil, the mason to
St. Généviève, the carpenter among the machinery at the opera,
and the gardener to Montreuil. Each of these men
return obtained what he pleased; and they are now sent for
from a distance of ten leagues round. It would be very useful
if pupils were placed, in the same manner, under skillful agri-
culturists. Each would take back to his native place not only
the tools proper for his calling, but that knowledge which being
multiplied at the centre, will never reach the circumference
unless a zealous, active, and persevering government uses all
possible means to overcome indifference and routine.
on his
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10095
The
)
FROM A LETTER TO CHAMFORT, 1785
He approaches to London are of a rustic beauty of which not
even Holland has furnished models (I should rather com-
pare them to some valley in Switzerland): for – and this
very remarkable fact immediately catches an experienced eye-
this domineering people are, beyond everything, agriculturists in
their island; and it is this that has so long saved them from
their own delirium. I felt my heart strongly and deeply moved
as I passed through this highly cultivated and prosperous land,
and I said to myself, “Wherefore this emotion so new to me ? »
These country-seats compared with ours are mere country boxes.
Several parts of France, even in the worst of its provinces, and
all Normandy, through which I have just passed, are assuredly
more beautiful in natural scenery than this country. There are
to be found, here and there in France, especially in our own
province, noble edifices, splendid establishments, immense public
works, vast traces of the most prodigious efforts of man; and yet
here I am delighted much more than I was ever surprised in
my own country by the things I have mentioned. It is because
here nature is improved and not forced; it is because these roads,
narrow but excellent, do not remind me of forced or average
labor, except to lament over the country in which such labor is
known; it is because this admirable state of cultivation shows me
the respect paid to property; it is because this care, this univer-
sal cleanliness, is a speaking symptom of welfare; it is because
all this rural wealth is in nature, near to nature, and according
to nature, and does not, like splendid palaces surrounded with
hovels, betray the excessive inequality of fortunes, which is the
source of so many evils; it is because all tells me that here the
people are something — that every man enjoys the development
and free exercise of his faculties, and that I am in another order
of things.
I am not an enthusiast in favor of England, and I now
know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution
is the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst
possible; and that if the Englishman is, as a social man, the
most free in the world, the English people are the least free of
any.
What then is freedom, since the small portion of it found in
one or two laws, places in the first rank a nation so little favored
.
## p. 10096 (#524) ##########################################
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MIRABEAU
by nature ? What may a constitution not effect, when this one,
though incomplete and defective, saves and will save for some
time to come the most corrupt people in the universe from their
own corruption ?
Will England be adduced as an objection? But that State is
constituted! The English have a country! - and this is the rea-
son why the people the most fanatic, the most ignorant, and the
most corrupt in the whole world, have a public spirit, civic vir-
tues, and incredible success, even in the midst of their delirium.
This is the reason why, despite of nature, they have assumed the
first rank among nations! .
How great must be the influence of a small number of data
favorable to the human species, since this people - ignorant,
superstitious, obstinate (for they are all this), covetous, and very
near to Punic faith — are better than most other nations known,
because they enjoy a small portion of civil liberty.
1
## p. 10097 (#525) ##########################################
10097
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
(1830-)
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
RÉDÉRIC MISTRAL, the Provençal poet, will take rank among
the few highly original singers of the middle decades of
this century. Long after the fanciful philology and bardic
affectations of his school are forgotten, and his own unfinished diction-
ary of the Provençal tongue has taken its place among other massive
monuments of abortive human industry, Mistral's three very remark-
able narrative poems, Mirèio,' Calendau,'
and Nerto,' will continue to charm by the
music of their verse, the depth of their
human interest, their dramatic energy, and
the truth and splendor of their local color.
Frédéric Mistral was born on the 8th of
September, 1830, at Maillane in the Bouches-
du-Rhône; in one of those rich and quiet
farmsteads, buried amid well-tilled fields
and approached by deeply shaded avenues,
whose verdure diversifies the silvery same-
ness of the Provençal landscape. From
whatever stormy and untamable ancestor
Mistral inherited the name of that furious FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
winter wind of the Midi, which dispels, when
it arises, all the languors of the Mediterranean shore, and lashes the
soft sea of those parts into flying foam, the spirit of that free and
renovating gale was certainly in him. His father, a wealthy freehold
farmer, sent him to school at Avignon, and to college at Montpellier,
and meant to make a lawyer of him. But the youth rebelled; and
intimated instead that he had a mission to renew the glories of
ancient Provençal song. His teacher at Avignon was Joseph Rouma-
nille, who had already written verses in the dialect of the Bouches-
du-Rhône; and who was able to inspire a class of singularly apt and
brilliant pupils, of whom Frédéric Mistral and Théodore Aubanel were
the stars, with a boundless faith in its poetic possibilities and ardor
for its admission — they called it restoration — to literary honor. Ear-
lier still, by a score of years, Jacques Jasmin at Agen had made a
XVII--632
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## p. 10098 (#526) ##########################################
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FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
highly successful experiment with a kindred patois; but up to his day,
no Frenchman for generations had dreamed of writing in anything
but classic French. Some time in the early fifties, however, Master
Roumanille set up a publishing house at Avignon; and he and his
disciples formed themselves into a society which they called the Fili-
brige, whose members, the Félibres, agreed not merely to compose
in the rustic dialect which they were born to speak, but gravely to
combine for the purpose of formulating its etymology and grammar,
and establishing, beyond cavil, its claim to a high literary descent.
Like William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, who considered the
language of Shakespeare only a late and rather weak offshoot from
the primitive speech of Dorset, the Félibres claimed for their dialect
the full honors of a language. They held it to be essentially the
same as that of the mediæval Troubadours, many of whose Courts of
Love and Contests of Song had flourished within their territory; and
they also maintained that the early Provençal sprang directly from
the language of Rome, and was itself the parent of Italian, French,
and Spanish, as well as of all the other living forms of Latin speech.
Needless to say that these linguistic pretensions were never made
good; but this matters little beside the fact that works of great
freshness and distinction were actually produced under the impulse
of the so-called Provençal revival.
Among these works Mistral's were easily first; and his masterpiece,
Mirèio,' was originally printed at Avignon in 1858, in Provençal only,
and under the auspices of Roumanille. A year later it was brought
out in Paris with a very striking parallel French version of the
poet's own, which, by rendering it easily intelligible to the ordinary
reader, invited general criticism, while incidentally it revealed the
almost unparalleled wealth of the writer's vocabulary in both forms
of speech.
Mirèio,' then, was a pastoral poem of the present time, all suf-
fused with the hot sunshine of Southern France; as full as the
Georgics themselves of rustic lore and homely agricultural detail, but
embodying also, in twelve leisurely books, the tale of two very young
lovers, their innocent passion, thrilling adventures, and hapless end.
The story was told with a kind of sweet garrulity, and an affluence
of unworn imagery, that simply took the world by storm. The elab-
orate measure adopted by Mistral (apparently he did not, as was at
first claimed, invent it) was managed with consummate grace, and
gave a high idea of the musical capacities of the Provençal speech,
and its curious richness, especially in feminine rhymes. It is well
understood now that Mistral and his colleagues fashioned their new
instrument more or less to suit themselves: improvising grammati-
cal forms at need, and manipulating and modifying terminal syllables
## p. 10099 (#527) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
10099
with glorious license. But the Troubadours of the twelfth century
had done just the same; and these were the alleged heirs both of
their inspiration and their methods.
In 1867, after an interval of nine years, Mirèio was followed by
(Calendau, another poem of epic proportions; which naturally created
less astonishment than its predecessor, but really fell very little short
of it in vigor of conception, variety of action, and beauty of imagery.
The heroine of the new romance was a dispossessed Princess of Baux,
in whose veins ran the blood of more than one queen of love; while
her suitor was a man of humble birth, whom she inspired by reciting
legends of chivalry, and compelled to win her hand by a series of
extraordinary tests and adventures.
In 1875 M. Mistral published a collection of fugitive pieces under
the title of Lis Isclo d'Oro,' or the Golden Isles. In 1883 appeared
his third long poem, "Nerto,' a tale of the last days of the Popes at
Avignon. The florid stanza of the two previous compositions was
abandoned in Nerto for a simply rhymed octosyllabic metre, like
that employed for narrative by Chaucer, Byron, and William Morris;
and the whole tone and movement of the story were more tame and
conventional than those of the earlier ones. Here too we have for
the first time a didactic purpose plainly avowed by the author: the
singular but perfectly serious one of illustrating the personal exist-
ence and persistent activity among mankind of that formidable Being
whose name (O Lucifer, son of the morning! ) is oddly abbreviated by
the Provençaux into Cifèr.
In 1897 appeared M.
Mistral's last extended poetical work up to
the date of this notice,-'Le Poème du Rhône) (The Poem of the
Rhône), eagerly expected during many years of slow completion. It
proved to be in twelve cantos; a highly romantic description and
indeed poetic romance of the great river and of sundry of its towns,
based on a narrative half mundane and half mysterious, that deals
with the humble life of the Rhodane boatmen prior to the advent
of the first steamboat that ruined the romance and industry of their
boating craft. A superb episode in the fourth canto presents Napo-
leon in his famous flight;— though it is but one passage among many
that won special praise. The whole work possesses a movement and
dramatic charm worthy of the poet.
M. Mistral writes always from the point of view of a devout
Catholic believer, whom no mysteries, whether of holy miracle or
Satanic witchcraft, can avail to stagger. Both in Mirèio) and in
Nerto' we find, by way of episode, specimens of the légende pieuse
in very beautiful modern renderings. But the plentiful lack of humor
which he shares with most of the associated Félibres —— wherein they
are, one and all, so inferior to Jasmin causes him to mingle the
## p. 10100 (#528) ##########################################
10100
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
supernatural and the matter-of-fact sometimes in a manner which is
almost grotesque. It is his one great fault as an artist.
M. Mistral has toiled heroically in his later years at a compre-
hensive lexicon of ancient and modern Provençal, two volumes of
which have appeared in print. France has awarded him all those
nominal distinctions — Academy crowns and prizes, badges of the
Legion – which she delights to bestow upon her gifted sons; but
he clings always, in his own person, to the old-fashioned rustic ways
which acquire so strong a fascination under his picturesque pen. He
lives very simply, on the farm or mas in the neighborhood of Saint
Rémy where he was born, and practices a free but homely hospi-
tality. He married, rather late in life, an exceedingly beautiful
bourgeoise of the renowned Arlesian type; and he himself has been,
from youth to old age, one of the handsomest men of his generation.
Harmet aux Prestone
THE INVOCATION, FROM MIRÈIO)
Copyright 1872, by Roberts Brothers
SING the love of a Provençal maid;
How through the wheat-fields of La Crau she strayed,
Following the fate that drew her to the sea.
Unknown beyond remote La Crau was she;
And I, who tell the rustic tale of her,
Would fain be Homer's humble follower.
What though youth's aureole was her only crown?
And never gold she wore, nor damask gown?
I'll build her up a throne out of my song,
And hail her queen in our despised tongue.
Mine be the simple speech that ye all know,
Shepherds and farmer-folk of lone La Crau.
Methinks I see yon airy little bough:
It mocks me with its freshness even now;
The light breeze lifts it, and it waves on high
Fruitage and foliage that cannot die.
Help me, dear God, on our Provençal speech,
To soar until the birds' own home I reach!
God of my country, who didst have thy birth
Among poor shepherds when thou wast on earth,
## p. 10101 (#529) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
JOIOI
Breathe fire into my song! Thou knowest, iny God,
How, when the lusty summer is abroad,
And figs turn ripe in sun and dew, comes he,-
Brute, greedy man,- and quite despoils the tree.
Yet on that ravaged tree thou savest oft
Some little branch inviolate aloft,
Tender and airy up against the blue,
Which the rude spoiler cannot win unto:
Only the birds shall come and banquet there,
When, at St. Magdalene's, the fruit is fair.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
THE TUNNY FISHING
From "Calendau,' in the Atlantic Monthly.
Mifflin & Co.
By permission of Houghton,
B
UT when with dawn the pallid moon had set,
The whole unnumbered shoal into the net
Came pouring. Ah, but then I was elate!
Drunk with my joy, thought I had conquered fate:
“Now, love,” I said, “thou shalt have gems and gems;
I'll spoil the goldsmiths for thy diadems!
Love is the sun, the king of all this earth —
He fires, unites, fulfills with joy, gives birth,
Calls from the dead the living by the score,
And kindles war, and doth sweet peace restore.
Lord of the land, lord of the deep is he,
Piercing the very monsters of the sea
With fire-tipped arrows. Lo, the tunny yon!
Now in one silver phalanx press they on;
Anon they petulantly part and spring
And plunge and toss, their armor glittering
Steel-blue upon their crystal field of fight,
Or rosy underneath the growing light.
'Twas nuptial bliss they sought. What haste! what
fire!
With the strong rush of amorous desire
Spots of intense vermilion went and came
On some, like sparkles of a restless flame,
A royal scarf, a livery of gold,
A wedding robe, fading as love grew cold.
## p. 10102 (#530) ##########################################
IOIO2
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
So at the last came one prodigious swell,
And the last line, that seemed invincible,
Brake with the pressure, and our boats leaped high.
«Huzza! the prey is caged! ” we wildly cry:
Courage, my lads, and don't forget the oil!
The fish we have, let not the dressing spoil!
« 'Bout ship! ” We bent our shoulders with a will,
Our oars we planted sturdily but still,
And the gay cohort, late alive with light,
Owned, with a swift despair, its prisoned plight;
And where it leaped with amorous content,
Quivered and plunged in fury impotent.
"Now then, draw in! But easy, comrades bold,
We are not gathering figs ! » And all laid hold
With tug and strain to land the living prize,
Fruit of the treacherous sea. In ecstasies
Of rage our victims on each other flew,
Dashing the fishers o'er with bitter dew.
Too like, too like our own unhappy people,
Who, when the tocsin clangs from tower and steeple
Peril to freedom and the land we cherish,
Insensate turn like those foredoomed to perish,
Brother on brother laying reckless hand,
Till comes a foreign lord to still the land.
Yet had we brave and splendid sport, I ween,
For some with tridents, some with lances keen,
Fell on the prey. And some were skilled to fling
A wingèd dart held by a slender string.
The wounded wretches 'neath the wave withdrew,
Trailing red lines along the mirror blue.
Slowly the net brimful of treasure mounted;
Silver was there, turquoise and gold uncounted,
Rubies and emeralds million-rayed. The men
Flung them thereon like eager children when
They stay their mother's footsteps to explore
Her apron bursting with its summer store
Of apricots and cherries.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
## p. 10103 (#531) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
10103
THE BALLAD OF GUIBOUR
From "Calendau,' in the Atlantic Monthly. By permission of Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.
A"
T Arles in the Carlovingian days,
By the swift Rhône water,
A hundred thousand on either side,
Christian and Saracen, fought till the tide
Ran red with the slaughter.
May God foreſend such another flood
Of direful war!
The Count of Orange on that black morn
By seven great kings was overborne,
And fied afar
Whenas he would avenge the death
Of his nephew slain.
Now are the kings upon his trail;
He slays as he flies: like fiery hail
His sword-strokes rain.
He hies him into the Aliscamp, —
No shelter there!
A Moorish hive is the home of the dead,
And hard he spurs his goodly steed
In his despair.
Over the mountain and over the moor
Flies Count Guillaume;
By sun and by moon he ever sees
The coming cloud of his enemies;
Thus gains his home,
Halts and lifts at the castle gate;
A mighty cry,
Calling his haughty wife by name;
«Guibour, Guibour, my gentle dame,
Open! 'Tis I!
« Open the gate to thy Guillaume!
Ta'en is the city
By thirty thousand Saracen,
Lo, they are hunting me to my den:
Guibour, have pity! ”
## p. 10104 (#532) ##########################################
10104
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
But the countess from the rampart cried,
Nay, chevalier,
I will not open my gates to thee;
For, save the women and babes,” said she,
« Whom I shelter here,
And the priest who keeps the lamps alight,
Alone am I.
My brave Guillaume and his barons all
Are fighting the Moor by the Aliscamp wall,
And scorn to fly! ”
« Guibour, Guibour, it is I myself!
And those men of mine
(God rest their souls! ) they are dead,” he cried.
«Or rowing with slaves on the salt sea-tide.
I have seen the shine
« Of Arles on fire in the dying day;
I have heard one shriek
Go up from all the arenas where
The nuns disfigure their bodies fair
Lest the Marran wreak
«His brutal will. Avignon's self
Will fall to-day!
Sweetheart, I faint; oh, let me in
Before the savage Mograbin
Fall on his prey! »
(
“I swear thou liest,” cried Guibour,
“Thou base deceiver!
Thou art perchance thyself a Moor
Who whinest thus outside my door;-
My Guillaume, never!
«Guillaume to look on burning towns
And fired by — thee!
Guillaume to see his comrades die,
Or borne to sore captivity,
And then to flee !
“He knows not fight! He is a tower
Where others fly!
The heathen spoiler's doom is sure,
The virgin's honor aye secure,
When he is by ! »
## p. 10105 (#533) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
I0105
Guillaume leapt up, his bridle set
Between his teeth,
While tears of love and tears of shame
Under his burning eyelids came,
And hard drew breath,
And seized his sword and plunged his spurs
Right deep, and so
A storm, a demon, did descend
To roar and smite, to rout and rend
The Moorish foe.
As when one shakes an almond-tree,
The heathen slain
Upon the tender grass fall thick,
Until the flying remnant seek
Their ships again.
Four kings with his own hand he slew,
And when once more
He turned him homeward from the fight
Upon the drawbridge long in sight
Stood brave Guibour.
“By the great gateway enter in,
My lord! ” she cried;
And might no further welcome speak,
But loosed his helm, and kissed his cheek,
With tears of pride.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
THE SCALING OF VENTOUR
From "Calendau, in the Atlantic Monthly.
Mifflin & Co.
By permission of Houghton,
SY
AVAGE at once and sheer, yon tower of rocks;
To tufts of lavender and roots of box
I needs must cling, and as my feet I ground
In the thin soil, the little stones would bound
With ringing cry from off the precipice,
And plunge in horror down the long abyss.
Sometimes my path along the mountain face
Would narrow to a thread; I must retrace
## p. 10106 (#534) ##########################################
10106
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
My steps and seek some longer, wearier way.
And if I had turned dizzy in that day,
Or storm had overtaken me, then sure
I had lain mangled at thy feet, Ventour.
But God preserved me. Rarely as I strove
With only death in view, I heard above
Some solitary skylark wing her flight
Afar, then all was still. Only by night
God visits these drear places. Cheery hum
Of insect rings there never. All is dumb.
Oft as the skeleton of some old yew,
In a deep chasm, caught my downward view,
« Thou art there! ) I cried; and straightway did discover
New realms of wood towering the others over,
A deeper depth of shadows. Ah, methought
Those were enchanted solitudes I sought!
>
From sun to sun I clambered, clinging fast
Till all my nails were broken. At the last,
The utter last, -oh palms of God, - I caught
The soft larch murmur near me, and distraught
Embraced the foremost trunk, and forward fell;
How broken, drenched, and dead, no words can tell!
But sleep renews. I slept, and with the dawn
A fresh wind blew, and all the pain was gone,
And I rose up, both stout of limb and glad;
Bread in my sack for nine full days I had, -
A drinking-flask, a hatchet, and a knife
Wherewith to carve the story of my strife
Upon the trunks. Ah! fine that early breeze
On old Ventour, rushing through all the trees!
A symphony sublime I seemed to hear,
Where all the hills and vales gave answer clear,
Harmonious. In a stately melancholy,
From the sun's cheerful glances hidden wholly
By the black raiment of their foliage,
The larches rose. No tempest's utmost rage
Could shake them, but with huge limbs close entwined,
Mutely they turned their faces to the wind;
Some hoar with mold and moss, while some lay prone,
Shrouded in the dead leaves of years agone.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
## p. 10107 (#535) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
10107
THE EPILOGUE, FROM NERTO)
From the Atlantic Monthly. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
I
F HAPLY some day, reader bland,
Thou voyagest through St. Gabriel's land,
Caring for aught that might avail
To prove the truth of this my tale,
There in the levels fair with corn
Thou shalt behold my nun forlorn,
Bearing upon her marble brow
Lucifer's lightning mark. But now,
Mute as a milestone. All these years
The murmur of budding life she hears;
And the white snails for coolness hide
Her rigid vesture folds inside,
Mint-perfumed; while about her feet
The shadow turns, the seasons fleet,
And everything beneath the sun
Changes, except the lonely nun.
Mute, said I? nay, the whisper goes
That here, when high midsummer glows,
There breathes at noon a dulcet tone.
Lay then thine ear against the stone,
And if thou hearest aught at all,
'Twill be the hymn angelical.
St. Gabriel hath, not far away,
An ancient, small basilica;
Sorrowful, as it would appear,
Because for now so many a year
No Christian footstep thither goes;
But there the guardian olive grows,
And in the archivolt of the door,
St. Gabriel -— kneeling as of yore-
Says Ave to Our Lady, while
The snaky author of all guile,
Twining around the knowledge-tree,
Lures from their primal innocency
Adam and Eve. A silent place:
The careless hind upon his ways
Mayhap salutes the Queen Divine,
But sets no candle at her shrine.
Only the blessed plants of God,
Among the court-yard stones untrod,
## p. 10108 (#536) ##########################################
10108
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
In fissures of the massy wall,
Between the roof tiles, over all
Take root and beauteously bloom,
And in the heat their wild perfume
Rises like altar incense. There
God's tiny living creatures fare;
Flutter the chickens of St. John;
Butterflies light and waver on;
Among the grass blades, mute and lean
The mantis kneels; the rifts between
Of the high roof-ridge, hides the bee
His honey hoard right busily;
'Neath gauzy wings, the livelong day
The innocent cicadas play
One only silver tune; — and these
Are as the parish families
Who throng the door, and tread the choir
Evermore gilt by sunshine. Higher
In window niches, with the wind
For organ bass, the sparrows find
Their place, and emulously swell
The lauds of that good Gabriel
Who saves them from the hawk. And I,
Maillano's minstrel, passing by
Thy widowed church, this very day,
Did enter in, and softly lay –
O Gabriel of Tarascon!
Upon thy altar this my song:
A simple tale, new come to light,
And only with thy glory bright.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
THE ALISCAMP
From Nerto,' in the Atlantic Monthly. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin
& Co.
AR below in those old days
FSpread that miraculous burial-place,
The Aliscamp of history,
With legend fraught, and mystery,
All full of tombs and chapels thrust,
And hilly with heaps of human dust.
## p. 10109 (#537) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
I0109
This is the legend ever told:-
When good St. Trophimus of old
The ground would consecrate, not one
Of all the congregation
Of fathers met, so meek they were,
Dared sprinkle the holy water there.
Then, ringed about with cloud and flame
Of angels, out of heaven came
Our Lord himself to bless the spot,
And left- if the tale erreth not-
The impress of his bended knee
Rock-graven. Howso this may be,
Full oft a swarm of angels white
Bends hither, on a tranquil night,
Singing celestial harmonies.
Wherefore the spot so holy is,
No man would slumber otherwhere;
But hither kings and priests repair,
And here earth's poor; and every one
Hath here his deep-wrought funeral stone
Or pinch of dust from Palestine:
The powers of hell in vain combine
'Gainst happy folk in slumber found
Under the cross, in that old ground.
And all along the river clear,
With silver laid upon the bier
For burial fees, men launched and sped
Upon the wave their kinsfolk dead
Who longed in Aliscamp to lie;
Then, as the coffins floated by,
Balancing on the waters bright,
All sailors turned them at the sight,
And helped the little skiffs ashore,
And signed the cross the sleepers o'er,
And kneeling under the willow-trees,
Piously prayed for their souls' peace.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
## p. 10110 (#538) ##########################################
IOIIO
DONALD G. MITCHELL
(IK MARVEL)
(1822-)
-
>
-
T is almost half a century since the Reveries of a Bachelor
– far the most popular of Mr. Mitchell's books — made its
public appearance, and instantly won for «Ik Marvel » the
kindly feeling of the young people of the land, - of the young of all
ages. It retains its place as securely to-day.
There is always a new generation coming forward, to the members
of which the brightness of the sunshine, and the freshness of the air,
and the greenness of the woods and fields, appeal; whose hearts are
full of romance, and whose minds are full
of hope and enthusiasm: and even when
mayhap youth has taken flight, there is with
some — it is to be hoped with many — a
kindly response to the thoughts, the dreams,
the hopes, and the ambitions of the days of
youth:-
«A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts. ”
A certain French professor once said,
referring to Evangeline,' «What have I
DONALD G. MITCHELL to do with that cow ? » The Reveries of a
Bachelor) and Dream Life) were not writ-
ten for such as he, nor do they appeal to the taste which is gratified
by much of the French and not a little of the English school of
to-day; but they are true to youth in every age, and grateful to the
unspoiled appetite to which they appeal.
They are exuberant. They are books of sentiment — some would
say even of sentimentalism. Yet the sentiment is as eternal as the
race; and deep down in his heart the critic responds to it, unless his
lost youth be not only lost but forgotten — buried in Lethe. The love
that is the theme of these books may be vealy; but he is to be pitied
who has no chord far within which vibrates in response to its por-
trayal, with a feeling which is pure, positive, and intense.
nature of the life which they depict may be simple, but it is never-
(
-
## p. 10111 (#539) ##########################################
DONALD G. MITCHELL
IOIII
theless based upon the eternal verities. It is a comfort to the reader,
and sets him up a little in his own esteem, that after knocking about
this world for forty years,—this world which each sometimes thinks
that he could reconstruct upon a better plan,- he can again take up
the Reveries of a Bachelor,' and read it with much the same feel-
ings with which he read it when he, it, and the world were young.
And it speaks well for the book itself that this can be; for only a
book which is sound at the core, and which appeals to a true and
abiding sentiment in the race,- only a book which also has definite
literary merit, - could endure this test.
In the preface to an edition printed in 1863, its author said:-
“My publisher has written me that the old type of this book of the Rev-
eries) are so far worn and battered that they will bear no further usage; and
in view of a new edition, he asks for such revision of the text as I
may
deem
judicious, and for a few lines in way of preface.
«I began the revision. I scored out word after word; presently I came
to the scoring out of paragraphs; and before I had done, I was making my
scores by the page.
“It would never do. It might be the better, but it would not be the same.
I cannot lop away those twelve swift, changeful years that are gone.
“Middle age does not look on life like youth; we cannot make it. And
why mix the years and the thoughts? Let the young carry their own burdens
and banner; and we — ours.
“I have determined not to touch the book. A race has grown up which
may welcome its youngness, and find a spirit or a sentiment in it that cleaves
to them, and cheers them, and is true. I hope they will. )
The instinct of the author was sound. The printer's types may
have been worn and battered, but the types of youth were still fresh
and true and clear cut. They were types of American — of New
England - humanity, but also of universal humanity as well; and so
the books were appreciated when translated into another tongue.
In later years Mr. Mitchell published a novel more ambitious
in intention, Dr. Johns,' in which the motif is the contrast between
the life of a retired village of Puritan Connecticut and that of the
South of France. It is full of carefully drawn pictures of the former, -
pictures drawn by one whose early life had been spent amid just
such scenes. A different life — that of the metropolis in the days
of the Potiphar Papers) and Mr. Brown of Grace Church - is de-
picted with a satiric pen in the Lorgnette, which was issued anony-
mously, and periodically, after the manner of the Spectator; and in
Fudge Doings,' a slight novel of New York society (which appears
in the Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siècle, par Pierre
Larousse,' as Aventures de la Famille Doings'). He also rewrote
for children a number of familiar tales, under the title About Old
Story-Tellers, and did other work of a similar character. He has
(
## p. 10112 (#540) ##########################################
IOII2
DONALD G. MITCHELL
been a traveler; and his first book, "Fresh Gleanings, or a New Sheaf
from the Old Fields of Continental Europe,' which was published in
1847, was the fruit of his maiden tour. His sketches are very unequal
in interest, and are interspersed with stories picked up here and there.
The work is marked by an immaturity, the gradual disappearance of
which it is interesting to follow in succeeding volumes. After this
came, two years later, “The Battle Summer' — Paris in 1848.
MIRABEAU
10087
to empires has not yet appeared, pure and unmixed, upon a
throne. To you it belongs to place it there; this sublime glory
is reserved for you. Your predecessor gained battles enough,
perhaps too many; he has too much fatigued Fame's hundred
tongues, and exhausted military glory, for several reigns,— nay,
for several centuries.
With much greater facility you
may create a glory more pure and not less brilliant, which shall
be wholly your own. Frederick conquered the admiration of man-
kind, but he never won their love.
This love you may
entirely possess.
Do not, ah! do not neglect the treasure which Providence has
spread in your path. Deserve the blessings of the poor, the love
of your people, the respect of Europe, and the good wishes of
wise men.
Be just, be good, and you will be great and happy!
You wish to obtain, dread sir, the title of Great; but you
wish to receive it from the mouth of history, and from the suf-
frage of ages to come,- you would despise it from the mouths
of your courtiers. If you do that which the son of your slave
could do, ten times a day, better than yourself, they will tell you
that you have performed an extraordinary action! If you suffer
your passions to mislead you, they will say that you are right!
If you are as lavish of the blood of your subjects as of the waters
of your rivers, again will they tell you that you are right! If
you barter for gold the air that preserves life, they will say that
you are right! If you revenge yourself - you who are so power-
ful — they will continue to tell you that you are right!
They said the same thing when Alexander, in a drunken fit,
plunged his dagger into the bosom of his friend; they said the
same thing when Nero murdered his mother.
If you indefatigably perform your duties, without ever putting
off till the following day the burthen of the present day; if by
great and fruitful principles you can simplify these duties, and
reduce them within the capacity of a single man; if you give
your subjects all the freedom they can bear; if you can protect
every kind of property, and facilitate useful labor; if you terrify
petty oppressors who in your name would prevent men from
doing, for their own advantage, that which injures not their fel-
lows,-a unanimous shout will bless your authority, and render
it more sacred and more powerful. Everything will then be easy
for you, because the will and the strength of all will be united
to your own strength and your own will, and your labor will
## p. 10088 (#516) ##########################################
10088
MIRABEAU
SOV-
become every day less severe. Nature has made labor necessary
to man. It gives him also this precious advantage, that change
of labor is to him not only a relaxation but a source of pleasure.
Who, more easily than a king, can live in strict accordance with
this order of nature? A philosopher has said that "no man feels
such lassitude of spirit as a king”; he should have said, "a
slothful king. ” How could lassitude of mind fall upon a
ereign who did his duty ? Could he ever keep up his vigor of
intellect and preserve his health so well as by shielding himself,
under the pursuit of labor, from the disgust which every man of
sense must feel among those idle talkers, those inventors of ful-
some praises, who study their prince for no other purpose than
to corrupt, blind, and rob him ? Their sole art is to render him
indifferent and feeble, or else impatient, rude, and idle.
Your subjects will enjoy your virtues, which alone can preserve
and improve their patrimony. Your courtiers will cultivate your
defects, by which alone they can support their influence and their
expectations.
It is worthy of you not to govern too
much.
[I recommend the immediate] abolition of military slavery;
that is to say, the obligation imposed upon every Prussian to
serve as a soldier, from the age of eighteen years to sixty
and more: that dreadful law arising from the necessities of an
iron age and a semi-barbarous country; that law dishonoring a
nation without whom your ancestors would have been nothing
but slaves, more or less decorated with empty honors. This
law does not produce you a single soldier more than you would
obtain by a wiser system, which may enable you to recruit the
Prussian army in a manner that shall elevate men's hearts, add
to the public spirit, and possess the forms of freedom, instead of
those of brutishness and slavery. Throughout Europe, and more
especially in your Majesty's dominions, one of the most useful
instincts upon which patriotism could be founded is stupidly
lost. Men are forced to go to the battle-field like cattle to the
slaughter-house; whilst nothing is easier than to make the pub-
lic service an object of emulation and glory.
Be also the first sovereign in whose dominions every man
willing to work shall find employment. Everything that breathes
must obtain its nourishment by labor. This is the first law of
nature, anterior to all human convention: it is the connecting
bond of all society; for every man who finds nothing but a
## p. 10089 (#517) ##########################################
MIRABEAU
10089
refusal to his offer to work in exchange for his subsistence
becomes the natural and lawful enemy of other men, and has a
right of private war against society. In the country, as in cities,
let workshops be everywhere opened at your Majesty's cost; let
all men, of what nation soever, find their maintenance in the
price of their labor; let your subjects there learn the value of
time and activity. Instruction, you are aware, is one of the most
important of a sovereign's duties, and likewise one of his richest
treasures. Entire liberty of the press ought to be one of your
first acts: not only because any restraint upon this liberty is a
hindrance to the enjoyment of natural rights, but because every
obstacle to the advancement of knowledge is an evil, a great evil;
especially for you, who are debarred thereby from obtaining,
through the medium of printing, a knowledge of the truth, and
of public opinion,- that prime minister of good kings.
Let information be circulated through your dominions. Read,
and let others read. If light were rising on all sides toward
the throne, would you invoke darkness? Oh, no! for it would
be in vain. You would lose too much, without even obtaining
the fatal success of extinguishing it. You will read, you will
begin a noble association with books. They have destroyed cruel
.
and disgraceful prejudices, they have smoothed the road before
you, they have served you even before you were born. You will
not be ungrateful toward the accumulated works of beneficent
genius.
You will read, and you will protect those who write; for with-
out them what would become of the human species, and what
would it be? They will instruct, they will assist, they will talk
to you without seeing you. Without approaching your throne,
they will introduce there the august truth.
This truth will enter
your palace alone, without escort, and without affected dignity; it
will bear neither title nor ribands, but will be invisible and dis-
interested.
You will read, but you will be desirous that your subjects
should also read. You will not think you have done all by re-
cruiting your academies from foreign countries: you will found
schools, you will multiply them, especially in country places, and
you will endow them. You would not reign in darkness; and you
will say, "Let there be light! ” The light will burst forth at your
voice; and its halo, playing round your brow, will form a more
glorious ornament than all the laurels won by conquerors.
## p. 10090 (#518) ##########################################
10090
MIRABEAU
I trust, dread sir, that my candor will not displease you. Medi-
tate on these respectful lines, and say:-
« This is what will never be admitted to me as true, and is
the very reverse of what I shall be told every day. The boldest
offer to kings nothing but veiled truths, whilst here I see truth
quite naked
This is far preferable to that venal incense
with which I am suffocated by versifiers, and panegyrists of the
Academy, who seized upon me in my cradle, and will scarcely
leave me when I am in my coffin. I am a man before I am a
king. Why should I be offended at being treated as a man?
Why should I be offended with a foreigner, who wants noth-
ing of me, and will soon quit my court never more to see me,
for speaking to me without disguise ? He points out to me that
which his eyes, his experience, his studies, and his understanding
have collected; he gives me, without expectation of reward, those
true and free counsels of which no condition of man is so much
in want as kings. He has no interest in deceiving me, and can
have none but good intentions.
Let me examine atten-
tively what he proposes; for the mere common-sense and the
simple candor of a man who has no other pursuit than the culti-
vation of his reason and his intellect, may perhaps be as good as
the old routine, and trickery, and forms, and diplomatic illusions,
and the ridiculous dogmas, of statesmen by profession. ”
A LETTER TO VITRY
Yºu
ou know the plan of the journal I purpose establishing, but
others will not understand it. It is to be founded upon the
idea — novel perhaps, and which in my opinion is not with-
out its usefulness — of noticing old books, as the ordinary jour-
nals notice new ones. To abridge and select is now, assuredly,
the most urgent want of science and letters. To preserve is of
a usefulness less direct, perhaps, or rather less abundant. Never-
theless, in proportion as taste and erudition pass away; in pro-
portion as the mania of writing becomes more contagious; in
proportion to the ardor in publishing, the haste with which books
are published, the mania or necessity of sacrificing to the taste
of the day, to the coryphei of the times, to the pretension of
being free from prejudice — which, in point of fact, is scarcely
## p. 10091 (#519) ##########################################
MIRABEAU
10091
anything better than substituting one prejudice for another; - in
proportion, I say, as all these diseases gain upon us, and increase,
do we too much neglect the exertions of our predecessors, who,
although it should be true that we surpass them in the talent of
bringing out, ought not the less to attract our attention, in order
that we may set in an elegant framework that which they have
clumsily enchased. I say then that this article will yield some-
thing; and I invoke your researches in the works of our philolo-
gers of the sixteenth century, our learned of the seventeenth, our
collections and our compilations of all ages, but that in which no
books were made except with stolen fragments, well or ill-stitched
together, no tragedies except with old hemistichs.
You know that another of my projects is to give in successive
parts a work on the academic collections, more especially that
entitled Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-
lettres. My plan here is to take the interesting papers of the
collection, and unite them by amalgamating and blending them
together, by clearing and pruning, and criticizing them one by
another; and to draw from this chaos all that is worthy of the
attention of philosophers, men of letters, and men of the world,
without crushing them by the weight of a fastidious erudition.
This is an undertaking the want of which is generally felt, and
its utility incontestable.
I intend to include speculative politics, finance, etc. ; and the
little I shall take from recent literature is my own affair. I
say “speculative politics” because, although I may be strongly
solicited, I will never write what Linguet so ridiculously calls
annals. ” The trade of a hussar no longer suits me.
even in this application, compatible with self-respect; for is there
not great rashness in giving intelligence of what passes at a dis-
tance, and passing judgment upon it, whilst daily experience
shows how difficult it is to obtain information of what is passing
close to us?
The art of printing has so greatly facilitated the means of
instruction that science has become a very common commodity.
But the mind of man may be improved ad infinitum. To render
the road to improvement easier, and to make the human intel-
lect advance with rapid strides in its progress of discovery,- to
engender new ideas, and make our exertions more fruitful, — a
mode is wanting to abridge study and avoid repetitions; placing
the studious man, especially the man of genius, at the point
(
It is not,
## p. 10092 (#520) ##########################################
10092
MIRABEAU
whence he is to start. If, for instance, he who appeared desirous
of seeking new discoveries were to spend his time in studying
the Epicycles of Ptolemy, or the Vortices of Descartes, he should
be spoken to in the following words: “This is the point we have
reached: Kepler, Newton, Claireau, Euler, etc. , have guessed,
demonstrated, and investigated this branch of science; and it
is from the point of their discoveries that you must try to
advance. ” Is this not the case with all sciences ?
FROM THE LETTERS
K
.
INGS who raise themselves only by things, and whom things
instruct badly,- because they almost always bend to the
monarch's will, passions, and opinions, - would perhaps
appear the most stupid of human beings if it were known how
little knowledge and how few ideas they generally have. Every
rational saying that escapes them is preserved; which is assur-
edly the best possible proof that such sayings are not very
numerous.
If I speak only of Paris, because at court nothing is spoken
of but Paris, it is not less true that the wants of this city are
the least urgent of any, and that as much care must be taken
not to create new paupers as to relieve those who already exist.
With regard to the latter, it would be at least necessary to give
to all the parish priests in the kingdom a sufficient income
to live; for they will not aid your poor if they are themselves
in poverty. The curés in some provinces - in Brittany, for
instance — have scarcely three hundred livres a year. What
necessity is there for the Archbishop of Auch to have 500,000
livres a year? Not but he makes a good use of it. Arch-
bishop Apchon is one of the most respectable prelates in the
kingdom; but he is mortal. The diocese of Cambrai has not
always had a Fénelon. When shall a portion of these enormous
revenues be taken and distributed among all the curés in the
kingdom ? Madame Louise has just obtained 30,000 livres a year
in corn and land, to be taken from the abbey of St. Germain,
for the support of the Carmelites of the kingdom. Assuredly
corn would grow equally well if there were no Carmelites in
France. But 30,000 livres a year, distributed among the poor
curés of the kingdom, would suffice to give, in a year of dearth,
the indispensably necessary to a great number of honest poor.
## p. 10093 (#521) ##########################################
MIRABEAU
10093
It is more than time to finish this long and shapeless collec-
tion of all sorts of dreams. You know my principles and opin-
ions sufficiently well to have no doubt that I have made a great
sacrifice to etiquette, to habit, and to prejudice, by fixing your
view upon the metropolis alone. The rest of the kingdom is a
stranger land to the great, which is the worst of evils. I wished
to show you how many useful and great things you did not do,
even in the place where you constantly reside. But would not
traveling amuse your illustrious friend-or her royal husband,
who, if he remain at Versailles, will never complete his education
either as a man or as a king? What a sad existence is that of
sovereigns! They are shut up within a circle of forty leagues
in diameter, the radii of which they perambulate as if by a con-
stant oscillation. The active correspondence between the King
of Spain and Louis XV. during twenty years is curious. They
wrote to each other every day in the same terms. The King of
Spain wrote: "At five o'clock I left St. Ildefonso, and the ren-
dezvous for the chase was at the Round of St. Anthony. ” The
same day Louis XV. wrote from Versailles: “At ten o'clock I
went to the Carrefour des Rossignols, at Compiègne, etc. ” And
this went on during twenty years.
Each monarch had his map,
and followed the route of the other, as if they had been learned
geographers studying Cook's voyages !
Let the Queen imitate her brother's example; let her travel,
and excite her husband to travel likewise, without pomp- for
pomp tends only to ruin, tire, and deceive. Let her travel.
Alas! very near the spot where the ostentation of wealth and
luxury insults the misery of the people, the King and Queen will
see, learn, and feel that which ministers and courtiers never tell
them!
The wealth of a country consists solely in its agriculture.
From it the population, and consequently the strength, of a State
are derived. Colbert, to whom so many just reproaches may be
made, was wrongfully accused when it was stated that he con-
cerned himself about nothing but manufactures. It must be
admitted that he rendered several ordinances favorable to agri-
culture. One of the most celebrated, promulgated the year
before his death, and rendered in favor of Alsace, provides that
«all persons who will occupy empty and vague lands may culti-
vate them to their own profit, and use them in full property. ”
Colbert, just before he died, contemplated making this ordinance
## p. 10094 (#522) ##########################################
10094
MIRABEAU
general throughout the kingdom: for he perceived what is very
evident, that the King has a full quarter of his kingdom to con-
quer from enemies termed heaths, downs, and so forth; and that
it is necessary to plow with one hand whilst the other prunes,
in order soon after to cut down the parasitical and voracious tree
of fiscality.
Conventicles of monks should be established in the most
uncultivated parts of the kingdom, to do there that which they
did a thousand years ago in different places. Monks can be
.
useful to society in no other way. These conventicles must be
dispersed in the most barren spots, according to the system of
the primitive church, and there supported during the time neces.
sary, by the profits of the newly cultivated lands, which might
afterwards be added to the mass of ecclesiastical property in
the kingdom. By such means the monks would be usefully em-
ployed, the waste lands put into cultivation, the State enriched,
and no one would have a right to complain.
But not only must the lands be cultivated, but the inhabitants
ſikewise. And why should not a former measure be adopted
which time has justified ?
In 1769, married men announcing a decided capacity for a
trade were selected from different families, and sent to Paris for
a year.
The circumstance of these men being married was con-
sidered a security for their return. Thus the farrier was sent
to Alfort under Bourgelat, the miller to Corbeil, the mason to
St. Généviève, the carpenter among the machinery at the opera,
and the gardener to Montreuil. Each of these men
return obtained what he pleased; and they are now sent for
from a distance of ten leagues round. It would be very useful
if pupils were placed, in the same manner, under skillful agri-
culturists. Each would take back to his native place not only
the tools proper for his calling, but that knowledge which being
multiplied at the centre, will never reach the circumference
unless a zealous, active, and persevering government uses all
possible means to overcome indifference and routine.
on his
## p. 10095 (#523) ##########################################
MIRABEAU
10095
The
)
FROM A LETTER TO CHAMFORT, 1785
He approaches to London are of a rustic beauty of which not
even Holland has furnished models (I should rather com-
pare them to some valley in Switzerland): for – and this
very remarkable fact immediately catches an experienced eye-
this domineering people are, beyond everything, agriculturists in
their island; and it is this that has so long saved them from
their own delirium. I felt my heart strongly and deeply moved
as I passed through this highly cultivated and prosperous land,
and I said to myself, “Wherefore this emotion so new to me ? »
These country-seats compared with ours are mere country boxes.
Several parts of France, even in the worst of its provinces, and
all Normandy, through which I have just passed, are assuredly
more beautiful in natural scenery than this country. There are
to be found, here and there in France, especially in our own
province, noble edifices, splendid establishments, immense public
works, vast traces of the most prodigious efforts of man; and yet
here I am delighted much more than I was ever surprised in
my own country by the things I have mentioned. It is because
here nature is improved and not forced; it is because these roads,
narrow but excellent, do not remind me of forced or average
labor, except to lament over the country in which such labor is
known; it is because this admirable state of cultivation shows me
the respect paid to property; it is because this care, this univer-
sal cleanliness, is a speaking symptom of welfare; it is because
all this rural wealth is in nature, near to nature, and according
to nature, and does not, like splendid palaces surrounded with
hovels, betray the excessive inequality of fortunes, which is the
source of so many evils; it is because all tells me that here the
people are something — that every man enjoys the development
and free exercise of his faculties, and that I am in another order
of things.
I am not an enthusiast in favor of England, and I now
know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution
is the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst
possible; and that if the Englishman is, as a social man, the
most free in the world, the English people are the least free of
any.
What then is freedom, since the small portion of it found in
one or two laws, places in the first rank a nation so little favored
.
## p. 10096 (#524) ##########################################
10096
MIRABEAU
by nature ? What may a constitution not effect, when this one,
though incomplete and defective, saves and will save for some
time to come the most corrupt people in the universe from their
own corruption ?
Will England be adduced as an objection? But that State is
constituted! The English have a country! - and this is the rea-
son why the people the most fanatic, the most ignorant, and the
most corrupt in the whole world, have a public spirit, civic vir-
tues, and incredible success, even in the midst of their delirium.
This is the reason why, despite of nature, they have assumed the
first rank among nations! .
How great must be the influence of a small number of data
favorable to the human species, since this people - ignorant,
superstitious, obstinate (for they are all this), covetous, and very
near to Punic faith — are better than most other nations known,
because they enjoy a small portion of civil liberty.
1
## p. 10097 (#525) ##########################################
10097
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
(1830-)
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
RÉDÉRIC MISTRAL, the Provençal poet, will take rank among
the few highly original singers of the middle decades of
this century. Long after the fanciful philology and bardic
affectations of his school are forgotten, and his own unfinished diction-
ary of the Provençal tongue has taken its place among other massive
monuments of abortive human industry, Mistral's three very remark-
able narrative poems, Mirèio,' Calendau,'
and Nerto,' will continue to charm by the
music of their verse, the depth of their
human interest, their dramatic energy, and
the truth and splendor of their local color.
Frédéric Mistral was born on the 8th of
September, 1830, at Maillane in the Bouches-
du-Rhône; in one of those rich and quiet
farmsteads, buried amid well-tilled fields
and approached by deeply shaded avenues,
whose verdure diversifies the silvery same-
ness of the Provençal landscape. From
whatever stormy and untamable ancestor
Mistral inherited the name of that furious FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
winter wind of the Midi, which dispels, when
it arises, all the languors of the Mediterranean shore, and lashes the
soft sea of those parts into flying foam, the spirit of that free and
renovating gale was certainly in him. His father, a wealthy freehold
farmer, sent him to school at Avignon, and to college at Montpellier,
and meant to make a lawyer of him. But the youth rebelled; and
intimated instead that he had a mission to renew the glories of
ancient Provençal song. His teacher at Avignon was Joseph Rouma-
nille, who had already written verses in the dialect of the Bouches-
du-Rhône; and who was able to inspire a class of singularly apt and
brilliant pupils, of whom Frédéric Mistral and Théodore Aubanel were
the stars, with a boundless faith in its poetic possibilities and ardor
for its admission — they called it restoration — to literary honor. Ear-
lier still, by a score of years, Jacques Jasmin at Agen had made a
XVII--632
-
## p. 10098 (#526) ##########################################
10098
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
highly successful experiment with a kindred patois; but up to his day,
no Frenchman for generations had dreamed of writing in anything
but classic French. Some time in the early fifties, however, Master
Roumanille set up a publishing house at Avignon; and he and his
disciples formed themselves into a society which they called the Fili-
brige, whose members, the Félibres, agreed not merely to compose
in the rustic dialect which they were born to speak, but gravely to
combine for the purpose of formulating its etymology and grammar,
and establishing, beyond cavil, its claim to a high literary descent.
Like William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, who considered the
language of Shakespeare only a late and rather weak offshoot from
the primitive speech of Dorset, the Félibres claimed for their dialect
the full honors of a language. They held it to be essentially the
same as that of the mediæval Troubadours, many of whose Courts of
Love and Contests of Song had flourished within their territory; and
they also maintained that the early Provençal sprang directly from
the language of Rome, and was itself the parent of Italian, French,
and Spanish, as well as of all the other living forms of Latin speech.
Needless to say that these linguistic pretensions were never made
good; but this matters little beside the fact that works of great
freshness and distinction were actually produced under the impulse
of the so-called Provençal revival.
Among these works Mistral's were easily first; and his masterpiece,
Mirèio,' was originally printed at Avignon in 1858, in Provençal only,
and under the auspices of Roumanille. A year later it was brought
out in Paris with a very striking parallel French version of the
poet's own, which, by rendering it easily intelligible to the ordinary
reader, invited general criticism, while incidentally it revealed the
almost unparalleled wealth of the writer's vocabulary in both forms
of speech.
Mirèio,' then, was a pastoral poem of the present time, all suf-
fused with the hot sunshine of Southern France; as full as the
Georgics themselves of rustic lore and homely agricultural detail, but
embodying also, in twelve leisurely books, the tale of two very young
lovers, their innocent passion, thrilling adventures, and hapless end.
The story was told with a kind of sweet garrulity, and an affluence
of unworn imagery, that simply took the world by storm. The elab-
orate measure adopted by Mistral (apparently he did not, as was at
first claimed, invent it) was managed with consummate grace, and
gave a high idea of the musical capacities of the Provençal speech,
and its curious richness, especially in feminine rhymes. It is well
understood now that Mistral and his colleagues fashioned their new
instrument more or less to suit themselves: improvising grammati-
cal forms at need, and manipulating and modifying terminal syllables
## p. 10099 (#527) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
10099
with glorious license. But the Troubadours of the twelfth century
had done just the same; and these were the alleged heirs both of
their inspiration and their methods.
In 1867, after an interval of nine years, Mirèio was followed by
(Calendau, another poem of epic proportions; which naturally created
less astonishment than its predecessor, but really fell very little short
of it in vigor of conception, variety of action, and beauty of imagery.
The heroine of the new romance was a dispossessed Princess of Baux,
in whose veins ran the blood of more than one queen of love; while
her suitor was a man of humble birth, whom she inspired by reciting
legends of chivalry, and compelled to win her hand by a series of
extraordinary tests and adventures.
In 1875 M. Mistral published a collection of fugitive pieces under
the title of Lis Isclo d'Oro,' or the Golden Isles. In 1883 appeared
his third long poem, "Nerto,' a tale of the last days of the Popes at
Avignon. The florid stanza of the two previous compositions was
abandoned in Nerto for a simply rhymed octosyllabic metre, like
that employed for narrative by Chaucer, Byron, and William Morris;
and the whole tone and movement of the story were more tame and
conventional than those of the earlier ones. Here too we have for
the first time a didactic purpose plainly avowed by the author: the
singular but perfectly serious one of illustrating the personal exist-
ence and persistent activity among mankind of that formidable Being
whose name (O Lucifer, son of the morning! ) is oddly abbreviated by
the Provençaux into Cifèr.
In 1897 appeared M.
Mistral's last extended poetical work up to
the date of this notice,-'Le Poème du Rhône) (The Poem of the
Rhône), eagerly expected during many years of slow completion. It
proved to be in twelve cantos; a highly romantic description and
indeed poetic romance of the great river and of sundry of its towns,
based on a narrative half mundane and half mysterious, that deals
with the humble life of the Rhodane boatmen prior to the advent
of the first steamboat that ruined the romance and industry of their
boating craft. A superb episode in the fourth canto presents Napo-
leon in his famous flight;— though it is but one passage among many
that won special praise. The whole work possesses a movement and
dramatic charm worthy of the poet.
M. Mistral writes always from the point of view of a devout
Catholic believer, whom no mysteries, whether of holy miracle or
Satanic witchcraft, can avail to stagger. Both in Mirèio) and in
Nerto' we find, by way of episode, specimens of the légende pieuse
in very beautiful modern renderings. But the plentiful lack of humor
which he shares with most of the associated Félibres —— wherein they
are, one and all, so inferior to Jasmin causes him to mingle the
## p. 10100 (#528) ##########################################
10100
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
supernatural and the matter-of-fact sometimes in a manner which is
almost grotesque. It is his one great fault as an artist.
M. Mistral has toiled heroically in his later years at a compre-
hensive lexicon of ancient and modern Provençal, two volumes of
which have appeared in print. France has awarded him all those
nominal distinctions — Academy crowns and prizes, badges of the
Legion – which she delights to bestow upon her gifted sons; but
he clings always, in his own person, to the old-fashioned rustic ways
which acquire so strong a fascination under his picturesque pen. He
lives very simply, on the farm or mas in the neighborhood of Saint
Rémy where he was born, and practices a free but homely hospi-
tality. He married, rather late in life, an exceedingly beautiful
bourgeoise of the renowned Arlesian type; and he himself has been,
from youth to old age, one of the handsomest men of his generation.
Harmet aux Prestone
THE INVOCATION, FROM MIRÈIO)
Copyright 1872, by Roberts Brothers
SING the love of a Provençal maid;
How through the wheat-fields of La Crau she strayed,
Following the fate that drew her to the sea.
Unknown beyond remote La Crau was she;
And I, who tell the rustic tale of her,
Would fain be Homer's humble follower.
What though youth's aureole was her only crown?
And never gold she wore, nor damask gown?
I'll build her up a throne out of my song,
And hail her queen in our despised tongue.
Mine be the simple speech that ye all know,
Shepherds and farmer-folk of lone La Crau.
Methinks I see yon airy little bough:
It mocks me with its freshness even now;
The light breeze lifts it, and it waves on high
Fruitage and foliage that cannot die.
Help me, dear God, on our Provençal speech,
To soar until the birds' own home I reach!
God of my country, who didst have thy birth
Among poor shepherds when thou wast on earth,
## p. 10101 (#529) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
JOIOI
Breathe fire into my song! Thou knowest, iny God,
How, when the lusty summer is abroad,
And figs turn ripe in sun and dew, comes he,-
Brute, greedy man,- and quite despoils the tree.
Yet on that ravaged tree thou savest oft
Some little branch inviolate aloft,
Tender and airy up against the blue,
Which the rude spoiler cannot win unto:
Only the birds shall come and banquet there,
When, at St. Magdalene's, the fruit is fair.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
THE TUNNY FISHING
From "Calendau,' in the Atlantic Monthly.
Mifflin & Co.
By permission of Houghton,
B
UT when with dawn the pallid moon had set,
The whole unnumbered shoal into the net
Came pouring. Ah, but then I was elate!
Drunk with my joy, thought I had conquered fate:
“Now, love,” I said, “thou shalt have gems and gems;
I'll spoil the goldsmiths for thy diadems!
Love is the sun, the king of all this earth —
He fires, unites, fulfills with joy, gives birth,
Calls from the dead the living by the score,
And kindles war, and doth sweet peace restore.
Lord of the land, lord of the deep is he,
Piercing the very monsters of the sea
With fire-tipped arrows. Lo, the tunny yon!
Now in one silver phalanx press they on;
Anon they petulantly part and spring
And plunge and toss, their armor glittering
Steel-blue upon their crystal field of fight,
Or rosy underneath the growing light.
'Twas nuptial bliss they sought. What haste! what
fire!
With the strong rush of amorous desire
Spots of intense vermilion went and came
On some, like sparkles of a restless flame,
A royal scarf, a livery of gold,
A wedding robe, fading as love grew cold.
## p. 10102 (#530) ##########################################
IOIO2
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
So at the last came one prodigious swell,
And the last line, that seemed invincible,
Brake with the pressure, and our boats leaped high.
«Huzza! the prey is caged! ” we wildly cry:
Courage, my lads, and don't forget the oil!
The fish we have, let not the dressing spoil!
« 'Bout ship! ” We bent our shoulders with a will,
Our oars we planted sturdily but still,
And the gay cohort, late alive with light,
Owned, with a swift despair, its prisoned plight;
And where it leaped with amorous content,
Quivered and plunged in fury impotent.
"Now then, draw in! But easy, comrades bold,
We are not gathering figs ! » And all laid hold
With tug and strain to land the living prize,
Fruit of the treacherous sea. In ecstasies
Of rage our victims on each other flew,
Dashing the fishers o'er with bitter dew.
Too like, too like our own unhappy people,
Who, when the tocsin clangs from tower and steeple
Peril to freedom and the land we cherish,
Insensate turn like those foredoomed to perish,
Brother on brother laying reckless hand,
Till comes a foreign lord to still the land.
Yet had we brave and splendid sport, I ween,
For some with tridents, some with lances keen,
Fell on the prey. And some were skilled to fling
A wingèd dart held by a slender string.
The wounded wretches 'neath the wave withdrew,
Trailing red lines along the mirror blue.
Slowly the net brimful of treasure mounted;
Silver was there, turquoise and gold uncounted,
Rubies and emeralds million-rayed. The men
Flung them thereon like eager children when
They stay their mother's footsteps to explore
Her apron bursting with its summer store
Of apricots and cherries.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
## p. 10103 (#531) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
10103
THE BALLAD OF GUIBOUR
From "Calendau,' in the Atlantic Monthly. By permission of Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.
A"
T Arles in the Carlovingian days,
By the swift Rhône water,
A hundred thousand on either side,
Christian and Saracen, fought till the tide
Ran red with the slaughter.
May God foreſend such another flood
Of direful war!
The Count of Orange on that black morn
By seven great kings was overborne,
And fied afar
Whenas he would avenge the death
Of his nephew slain.
Now are the kings upon his trail;
He slays as he flies: like fiery hail
His sword-strokes rain.
He hies him into the Aliscamp, —
No shelter there!
A Moorish hive is the home of the dead,
And hard he spurs his goodly steed
In his despair.
Over the mountain and over the moor
Flies Count Guillaume;
By sun and by moon he ever sees
The coming cloud of his enemies;
Thus gains his home,
Halts and lifts at the castle gate;
A mighty cry,
Calling his haughty wife by name;
«Guibour, Guibour, my gentle dame,
Open! 'Tis I!
« Open the gate to thy Guillaume!
Ta'en is the city
By thirty thousand Saracen,
Lo, they are hunting me to my den:
Guibour, have pity! ”
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10104
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
But the countess from the rampart cried,
Nay, chevalier,
I will not open my gates to thee;
For, save the women and babes,” said she,
« Whom I shelter here,
And the priest who keeps the lamps alight,
Alone am I.
My brave Guillaume and his barons all
Are fighting the Moor by the Aliscamp wall,
And scorn to fly! ”
« Guibour, Guibour, it is I myself!
And those men of mine
(God rest their souls! ) they are dead,” he cried.
«Or rowing with slaves on the salt sea-tide.
I have seen the shine
« Of Arles on fire in the dying day;
I have heard one shriek
Go up from all the arenas where
The nuns disfigure their bodies fair
Lest the Marran wreak
«His brutal will. Avignon's self
Will fall to-day!
Sweetheart, I faint; oh, let me in
Before the savage Mograbin
Fall on his prey! »
(
“I swear thou liest,” cried Guibour,
“Thou base deceiver!
Thou art perchance thyself a Moor
Who whinest thus outside my door;-
My Guillaume, never!
«Guillaume to look on burning towns
And fired by — thee!
Guillaume to see his comrades die,
Or borne to sore captivity,
And then to flee !
“He knows not fight! He is a tower
Where others fly!
The heathen spoiler's doom is sure,
The virgin's honor aye secure,
When he is by ! »
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FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
I0105
Guillaume leapt up, his bridle set
Between his teeth,
While tears of love and tears of shame
Under his burning eyelids came,
And hard drew breath,
And seized his sword and plunged his spurs
Right deep, and so
A storm, a demon, did descend
To roar and smite, to rout and rend
The Moorish foe.
As when one shakes an almond-tree,
The heathen slain
Upon the tender grass fall thick,
Until the flying remnant seek
Their ships again.
Four kings with his own hand he slew,
And when once more
He turned him homeward from the fight
Upon the drawbridge long in sight
Stood brave Guibour.
“By the great gateway enter in,
My lord! ” she cried;
And might no further welcome speak,
But loosed his helm, and kissed his cheek,
With tears of pride.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
THE SCALING OF VENTOUR
From "Calendau, in the Atlantic Monthly.
Mifflin & Co.
By permission of Houghton,
SY
AVAGE at once and sheer, yon tower of rocks;
To tufts of lavender and roots of box
I needs must cling, and as my feet I ground
In the thin soil, the little stones would bound
With ringing cry from off the precipice,
And plunge in horror down the long abyss.
Sometimes my path along the mountain face
Would narrow to a thread; I must retrace
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10106
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
My steps and seek some longer, wearier way.
And if I had turned dizzy in that day,
Or storm had overtaken me, then sure
I had lain mangled at thy feet, Ventour.
But God preserved me. Rarely as I strove
With only death in view, I heard above
Some solitary skylark wing her flight
Afar, then all was still. Only by night
God visits these drear places. Cheery hum
Of insect rings there never. All is dumb.
Oft as the skeleton of some old yew,
In a deep chasm, caught my downward view,
« Thou art there! ) I cried; and straightway did discover
New realms of wood towering the others over,
A deeper depth of shadows. Ah, methought
Those were enchanted solitudes I sought!
>
From sun to sun I clambered, clinging fast
Till all my nails were broken. At the last,
The utter last, -oh palms of God, - I caught
The soft larch murmur near me, and distraught
Embraced the foremost trunk, and forward fell;
How broken, drenched, and dead, no words can tell!
But sleep renews. I slept, and with the dawn
A fresh wind blew, and all the pain was gone,
And I rose up, both stout of limb and glad;
Bread in my sack for nine full days I had, -
A drinking-flask, a hatchet, and a knife
Wherewith to carve the story of my strife
Upon the trunks. Ah! fine that early breeze
On old Ventour, rushing through all the trees!
A symphony sublime I seemed to hear,
Where all the hills and vales gave answer clear,
Harmonious. In a stately melancholy,
From the sun's cheerful glances hidden wholly
By the black raiment of their foliage,
The larches rose. No tempest's utmost rage
Could shake them, but with huge limbs close entwined,
Mutely they turned their faces to the wind;
Some hoar with mold and moss, while some lay prone,
Shrouded in the dead leaves of years agone.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
## p. 10107 (#535) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
10107
THE EPILOGUE, FROM NERTO)
From the Atlantic Monthly. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
I
F HAPLY some day, reader bland,
Thou voyagest through St. Gabriel's land,
Caring for aught that might avail
To prove the truth of this my tale,
There in the levels fair with corn
Thou shalt behold my nun forlorn,
Bearing upon her marble brow
Lucifer's lightning mark. But now,
Mute as a milestone. All these years
The murmur of budding life she hears;
And the white snails for coolness hide
Her rigid vesture folds inside,
Mint-perfumed; while about her feet
The shadow turns, the seasons fleet,
And everything beneath the sun
Changes, except the lonely nun.
Mute, said I? nay, the whisper goes
That here, when high midsummer glows,
There breathes at noon a dulcet tone.
Lay then thine ear against the stone,
And if thou hearest aught at all,
'Twill be the hymn angelical.
St. Gabriel hath, not far away,
An ancient, small basilica;
Sorrowful, as it would appear,
Because for now so many a year
No Christian footstep thither goes;
But there the guardian olive grows,
And in the archivolt of the door,
St. Gabriel -— kneeling as of yore-
Says Ave to Our Lady, while
The snaky author of all guile,
Twining around the knowledge-tree,
Lures from their primal innocency
Adam and Eve. A silent place:
The careless hind upon his ways
Mayhap salutes the Queen Divine,
But sets no candle at her shrine.
Only the blessed plants of God,
Among the court-yard stones untrod,
## p. 10108 (#536) ##########################################
10108
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
In fissures of the massy wall,
Between the roof tiles, over all
Take root and beauteously bloom,
And in the heat their wild perfume
Rises like altar incense. There
God's tiny living creatures fare;
Flutter the chickens of St. John;
Butterflies light and waver on;
Among the grass blades, mute and lean
The mantis kneels; the rifts between
Of the high roof-ridge, hides the bee
His honey hoard right busily;
'Neath gauzy wings, the livelong day
The innocent cicadas play
One only silver tune; — and these
Are as the parish families
Who throng the door, and tread the choir
Evermore gilt by sunshine. Higher
In window niches, with the wind
For organ bass, the sparrows find
Their place, and emulously swell
The lauds of that good Gabriel
Who saves them from the hawk. And I,
Maillano's minstrel, passing by
Thy widowed church, this very day,
Did enter in, and softly lay –
O Gabriel of Tarascon!
Upon thy altar this my song:
A simple tale, new come to light,
And only with thy glory bright.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
THE ALISCAMP
From Nerto,' in the Atlantic Monthly. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin
& Co.
AR below in those old days
FSpread that miraculous burial-place,
The Aliscamp of history,
With legend fraught, and mystery,
All full of tombs and chapels thrust,
And hilly with heaps of human dust.
## p. 10109 (#537) ##########################################
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
I0109
This is the legend ever told:-
When good St. Trophimus of old
The ground would consecrate, not one
Of all the congregation
Of fathers met, so meek they were,
Dared sprinkle the holy water there.
Then, ringed about with cloud and flame
Of angels, out of heaven came
Our Lord himself to bless the spot,
And left- if the tale erreth not-
The impress of his bended knee
Rock-graven. Howso this may be,
Full oft a swarm of angels white
Bends hither, on a tranquil night,
Singing celestial harmonies.
Wherefore the spot so holy is,
No man would slumber otherwhere;
But hither kings and priests repair,
And here earth's poor; and every one
Hath here his deep-wrought funeral stone
Or pinch of dust from Palestine:
The powers of hell in vain combine
'Gainst happy folk in slumber found
Under the cross, in that old ground.
And all along the river clear,
With silver laid upon the bier
For burial fees, men launched and sped
Upon the wave their kinsfolk dead
Who longed in Aliscamp to lie;
Then, as the coffins floated by,
Balancing on the waters bright,
All sailors turned them at the sight,
And helped the little skiffs ashore,
And signed the cross the sleepers o'er,
And kneeling under the willow-trees,
Piously prayed for their souls' peace.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.
## p. 10110 (#538) ##########################################
IOIIO
DONALD G. MITCHELL
(IK MARVEL)
(1822-)
-
>
-
T is almost half a century since the Reveries of a Bachelor
– far the most popular of Mr. Mitchell's books — made its
public appearance, and instantly won for «Ik Marvel » the
kindly feeling of the young people of the land, - of the young of all
ages. It retains its place as securely to-day.
There is always a new generation coming forward, to the members
of which the brightness of the sunshine, and the freshness of the air,
and the greenness of the woods and fields, appeal; whose hearts are
full of romance, and whose minds are full
of hope and enthusiasm: and even when
mayhap youth has taken flight, there is with
some — it is to be hoped with many — a
kindly response to the thoughts, the dreams,
the hopes, and the ambitions of the days of
youth:-
«A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts. ”
A certain French professor once said,
referring to Evangeline,' «What have I
DONALD G. MITCHELL to do with that cow ? » The Reveries of a
Bachelor) and Dream Life) were not writ-
ten for such as he, nor do they appeal to the taste which is gratified
by much of the French and not a little of the English school of
to-day; but they are true to youth in every age, and grateful to the
unspoiled appetite to which they appeal.
They are exuberant. They are books of sentiment — some would
say even of sentimentalism. Yet the sentiment is as eternal as the
race; and deep down in his heart the critic responds to it, unless his
lost youth be not only lost but forgotten — buried in Lethe. The love
that is the theme of these books may be vealy; but he is to be pitied
who has no chord far within which vibrates in response to its por-
trayal, with a feeling which is pure, positive, and intense.
nature of the life which they depict may be simple, but it is never-
(
-
## p. 10111 (#539) ##########################################
DONALD G. MITCHELL
IOIII
theless based upon the eternal verities. It is a comfort to the reader,
and sets him up a little in his own esteem, that after knocking about
this world for forty years,—this world which each sometimes thinks
that he could reconstruct upon a better plan,- he can again take up
the Reveries of a Bachelor,' and read it with much the same feel-
ings with which he read it when he, it, and the world were young.
And it speaks well for the book itself that this can be; for only a
book which is sound at the core, and which appeals to a true and
abiding sentiment in the race,- only a book which also has definite
literary merit, - could endure this test.
In the preface to an edition printed in 1863, its author said:-
“My publisher has written me that the old type of this book of the Rev-
eries) are so far worn and battered that they will bear no further usage; and
in view of a new edition, he asks for such revision of the text as I
may
deem
judicious, and for a few lines in way of preface.
«I began the revision. I scored out word after word; presently I came
to the scoring out of paragraphs; and before I had done, I was making my
scores by the page.
“It would never do. It might be the better, but it would not be the same.
I cannot lop away those twelve swift, changeful years that are gone.
“Middle age does not look on life like youth; we cannot make it. And
why mix the years and the thoughts? Let the young carry their own burdens
and banner; and we — ours.
“I have determined not to touch the book. A race has grown up which
may welcome its youngness, and find a spirit or a sentiment in it that cleaves
to them, and cheers them, and is true. I hope they will. )
The instinct of the author was sound. The printer's types may
have been worn and battered, but the types of youth were still fresh
and true and clear cut. They were types of American — of New
England - humanity, but also of universal humanity as well; and so
the books were appreciated when translated into another tongue.
In later years Mr. Mitchell published a novel more ambitious
in intention, Dr. Johns,' in which the motif is the contrast between
the life of a retired village of Puritan Connecticut and that of the
South of France. It is full of carefully drawn pictures of the former, -
pictures drawn by one whose early life had been spent amid just
such scenes. A different life — that of the metropolis in the days
of the Potiphar Papers) and Mr. Brown of Grace Church - is de-
picted with a satiric pen in the Lorgnette, which was issued anony-
mously, and periodically, after the manner of the Spectator; and in
Fudge Doings,' a slight novel of New York society (which appears
in the Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siècle, par Pierre
Larousse,' as Aventures de la Famille Doings'). He also rewrote
for children a number of familiar tales, under the title About Old
Story-Tellers, and did other work of a similar character. He has
(
## p. 10112 (#540) ##########################################
IOII2
DONALD G. MITCHELL
been a traveler; and his first book, "Fresh Gleanings, or a New Sheaf
from the Old Fields of Continental Europe,' which was published in
1847, was the fruit of his maiden tour. His sketches are very unequal
in interest, and are interspersed with stories picked up here and there.
The work is marked by an immaturity, the gradual disappearance of
which it is interesting to follow in succeeding volumes. After this
came, two years later, “The Battle Summer' — Paris in 1848.
