Memoirs of Mistral

It was in the autumn of this year 1855 that the first cloud overshadowed my happy youth. It was the sorrow of losing my father. He had become quite blind, and as far back as the previous Christmas we had been anxious about him. For on that occasion he whom the festival had always filled with joy, this year seemed overcome by a deep depression which we felt augured badly for the future. It was in vain that as usual we lit the three sacred candles and spread the table with the three white cloths; in vain that I offered him the mulled wine, hoping to hear from his lips the sacramental “Good cheer.” Groping, alas! with his long thin arms, he seated himself with never a word. In vain also my mother tried to tempt him with the dishes of Christmas, one after the other—the plate of snails, the fish of Martique, the almond nougat, the cake of oil. Wrapt in pensive thought the poor old man supped in silence. A shadow, a forerunner of death, was over him, and his blindness oppressed him. Once he looked up and spoke.

“Last year at Christmas I could still see the light of the candles; but this year, nothing, nothing. Help me, O blessed Virgin.”

In the first days of September he departed this life. Having received the last sacrament with sincerity and faith, the strong faith of simple souls, he turned to his family, who all stood weeping around his bed:

“Come, come, my children,” he said to us. “I am going—and to God I give thanks for all that I owe him: my long life and my labour, which He has blessed.”

Then he called me to him and asked:

“Frédéric, what sort of weather is it?”

“It rains, my father,” I replied.

“Ah well,” he said, “if it rains it its good for the seeds.”

Then he gave up his soul to God. I can never forget that moment! They covered his head with the sheet, and near the bed, that big bed in the white alcove where in broad daylight I had been born, they lit a long pale taper. The shutters of the room were half closed. The labourers were ordered to unyoke at once. The maid, in the kitchen, turned over the cauldrons and pots on the dresser.

Around the ashes of the fire, which had been extinguished, we seated ourselves in a silent circle, my mother at the corner of the big chimney, bearing, according to the custom of the widows of Provence, as sign of mourning, a white fichu on her head. And all day the neighbours, men and

women, relations and friends, came to offer us their sympathy, greeting us one after another with the customary “May our Lord preserve you!”

And lengthily, piously, they went through the condolences in honour of the “poor master.”

The next day all Maillane assisted at the funeral ceremony; and in their prayers for him, the poor added always:

“God grant that as many angels may accompany him to heaven as he has given us loaves of bread!”

The coffin was borne by hand with cloths, the lid off in order that for the last time the people might see him with crossed hands in his white shroud. Behind walked Jean Roussière carrying the wax taper which had watched over his master.

As for me, while the passing-bell sounded in the distance, I went to weep alone in the fields, for the tree of the house had fallen. The Mas du Juge, the home of my childhood, was now desolate and deserted in my eyes as though it had lost its guardian spirit. The head of the family, Master François my father, had been the last of the patriarchs of Provence, a faithful preserver of traditions and customs, and the last, at least for me, of that austere generation, religious, humble, and self-controlled, who had patiently gone through the miseries and convulsions of the Revolution, giving to France the disinterested devotion which flamed up in her great holocausts, and the indefatigable service of her big armies.

One week later the division of property took place. The farm produce and the “stacks,” the horses, oxen, sheep, poultry—all were divided into lots. The furniture, our dear old things, the big four-poster beds, the kneading-trough of iron-work, the meal-chest, the polished wardrobes, the carved kneading-trough, the table, the mirror, all which, ever since my childhood, I had seen as a part of my home life, the rows of plates, the painted china, which never left the shelves of the dresser, the sheets of hemp that my mother herself had woven; agricultural implements, waggons, ploughs, harness, tools, utensils of every kind—all these were collected and set out on the threshing-floor of the farm, to be divided in three divisions by an expert. The servants, hired either by the year or the month, left one after the other. And to the paternal farm,[16] which was not in my division, I had to say good-bye.

One afternoon, with my mother and the dog, and Jean Roussière who acted as charioteer, we departed with heavy hearts, to dwell henceforth in the house at Maillane which in the division had fallen to me.

It was from personal experience I could write later on in Mireille of home-sickness:

CHAPTER XVI

“MIREILLE”

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

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

Adolphe Dumas started up all alert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let him come in,” said the poet.

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

“There are still two louis,” she replied.

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

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

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

Adolphe Dumas wrote me:

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

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

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

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

TO LAMARTINE.

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

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF LAMARTINE.[18]

CHAPTER XVII

THE REVELS OF TRINQUETAILLE

(A REMINISCENCE OF ALPHONSE DAUDET)

Alphonse Daudet was at that time secretary to the Duc de Morny, honorary secretary be it understood, for the utmost that the young man ever did was to go once a month to see if his patron, the President of the Senate, was flourishing and in a good temper. Amongst other exquisite things from his pen, Daudet had written a love-poem called “Les Prunes.” All Paris knew it by heart, and Monsieur de Morny, hearing it recited one evening in a drawing-room, requested the author might be presented to him, with the result that he took the young man under his patronage. To say nothing of his wit, which flashed like a diamond, Daudet was a handsome fellow, brown, with a clear skin and black eyes with long lashes, a budding beard and thick crop of hair which he allowed to grow so long that the Duke, every time the author of “Les Prunes” called on him at the Senate, would repeat, with disapproving finger pointing at the offending locks:

“Well poet—and when are we going to cut off this wig?”

“Next week, Monseigneur,” the poet invariably replied.

About once a month the great Duc de Morny made the same observation to the little Daudet, and every time the poet made the same answer. But the Duke himself was more likely to fall than Daudet’s mane.

At that age the future chronicler of the prodigious adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon was a merry youth, who kept pace with the wind, impatient to know everything, an audacious Bohemian, frank and free with his tongue, throwing himself headlong in the swim of life with laughter and noise, always on the look-out for adventures. He had quicksilver in his veins.

I remember one evening, when we were supping at the Chêne-Vert, a pleasant inn in the neighbourhood of Avignon, hearing music for a dance that was going on just below the terrace where we were dining. Daudet suddenly jumped down, a flying leap of some nine or ten feet, crashing through the branches of a vine trellis and landing in the midst of the dancers, who took him for a devil.

Another time, from the height of the road which passes at the foot of the Pont du Gard, he threw himself, without knowing how to swim, into the River Gardon, to see, so he said, if the water was deep. Had not a fisherman caught hold of him with his boathook, my poor Alphonse would most certainly have drunk what we call “the soup of eleven o’clock!”

Another time, on the bridge that leads from Avignon to the island of Barthelasse, he madly climbed on the narrow parapet, and racing along at the risk of tumbling over into the Rhône, he cried out, for the edification of some country people who heard him: “It is from here, by thunder! that we threw the corpse of Brune into the Rhône, yes, the Maréchal Brune! And may it serve as an example to those northerners and barbarians if ever they return to annoy us!”

One day in September, at Maillane, I received a little note from friend Daudet, one of those notes minute as a parsley leaf, well known to all his friends, in which he said to me:

On the day mentioned, between eight and nine o’clock, we all found ourselves at Saint-Gabriel, at the foot of the chapel which guards the mountain. At Sarrasine’s, we drank a cherry brandy, and then—forward on the white road.

We inquired of a roadmender how far it was to Arles.

“When you get to the tomb of Roland,” he answered, “you will still have two hours’ walk.”

We inquired where was the tomb of Roland.

“Down there where you see a group of cypresses on the banks of the Viqueirat.”

“And this Roland, who was he?”

“He was, so they say, a famous captain of the time of the Saracens.... His teeth, I will wager, no longer hurt him.”

Greetings to thee, Roland! We never expected, when we set out, to find still living, in the fields and meadows of Trebon, the legendary glory of the Companion of Charlemagne. But to continue. Just as the Man of Bronze struck twelve, gaily we descended upon Arles, entering by the Porte de la Cavalerie, all of us white with dust. As we had the appetite of Spaniards we went at once to breakfast at the Hôtel Pinus.

We were not badly served; and when one is young, making merry with friends and rejoicing to be alive, there is nothing like dining together for engendering high spirits.

There was one thing, however, which disturbed our equanimity. A waiter in a black coat, with pomaded head, and whiskers standing out like birch brooms, hovered perpetually around us, a napkin under his arm, never taking his eyes off us, and under pretext of changing our plates, listening eagerly to all our foolish talk.

“We must get rid of him. Here, waiter!” said Daudet.

The limpet approached. “Yes, sir?”

“Quick, fetch me a dish—a large silver dish.”

“To place upon it?” inquired the waiter, puzzled.

“A jackanapes,” replied Daudet in a voice of thunder.

The changer of plates did not wait for any more, and from that moment left us in peace.

“What I dislike about these hotels,” said Mathieu, “is that since the commercial traveller introduced the northern fashions, whether at Avignon, Augoulême, Draguignan, or even at Brier-la-Gaillarde, they now all give you the same insipid dishes—carrot broth, veal and sorrel, roast beef half cooked, cauliflower with butter, and a variety of eatables with neither taste nor savour. In Provence, if you want to find the old-fashioned cooking of the country which was appetising and savoury, you must go to the little inn frequented by the country people.”

“What if we go this evening,” cried Grivolas the painter.

“Let us go,” we all agreed.

We paid without further delay, lighted our cigars and sallied forth to take our cup of coffee in a popular café, and then in the narrow streets, cool, and white with limestone, flanked by stately old houses on either side, we strolled about till the twilight fell, looking at the queenly Arlesienne beauties on their doorsteps or behind the transparent window curtains, for I must own they had counted considerably as a latent motive in our descent upon Arles.

We passed the Arena, its great gates wide open, and the Roman theatre with its two majestic columns. We visited Saint-Trophime and the cloisters, the famous Head without a Nose, the Palaces of the Lion, of the Porcelets, of Constantine, and of the Grand Prior.

Sometimes on the narrow pavement we ran up against a donkey belonging to some water-carrier selling water from the Rhône in barrels. We also encountered troops of sunburnt gleaners, newly returned from the country, carrying on their heads the heavy load of gleanings, and beside these the vendors of snails, shouting at the pitch of their voices:

“Who will buy fresh snails from the fields!”

About sunset we inquired of a woman, who stood just outside the fish-market knitting a stocking, if she could direct us to some little inn or tavern, unpretentious, but clean, where we could dine in simple apostolic fashion.

The woman, thinking we were joking, cried out to her neighbours, who, at her shout of laughter, came to their doors coifed with the coquettish headgear of Arles.

“See, here are some gentlemen looking for a tavern at which to sup—do you know of one?”

“Send them,” cried one, “to the Rue Pique-Monte.”

“Or to the ‘Little Cat,’” said another.

“Or to the ‘Widow Come Here.’”

“Or to the Gate of the Chestnuts.”

“Don’t mock us, my dears,” said I. “We want some quiet little place within the reach of anybody, where honest people go.”

“Very well,” said a fat man seated on a post, smoking his pipe, with a face coloured like a beggar’s gourd, “why not go to Counënc’s? See here, gentlemen, I will conduct you,” he continued, rising and shaking out his pipe; “I have to go by that way. It is on the other side of the Rhône, in the suburb of Trinquetaille. It is not an hotel of the first order, my faith, but the watermen, the bargees and the boatmen who come from Condrieu, feed there and are not discontented. The owner is from Combs, a village near Beaucaire, which supplies some bargemen. I myself, who have the honour of addressing you, am master of a boat, and I have done my share of sailing.”

We inquired if he had been far afield.

“Oh no,” he replied, “I have only sailed in the small coasting trade as far as Havre-de-Grace, but it is a true saying that there is never a boatman who does not face danger—and for sure, had it not been for the Great Saintes-Maries, who have always protected me, there are many times, my friends, when we should have gone under.”

“And they call you?”

“Master Gafet! Always at your service should you at any time run down to Sambuc or to Graz to see the vessels embedded in the sand at the river’s mouth.”

So, chatting pleasantly, we arrived at the bridge of Trinquetaille, at that time still a bridge of boats. As we passed over the moving planks which connected the chain of boats one felt beneath the heaving river, powerful and living, on whose mighty bosom one rose and sank as it drew breath. Having crossed the Rhône, we turned to the left on the quay, and there, beneath an old trellis, bending over the trough of the well, we saw—how shall I describe her?—a kind of witch, and one-eyed to boot, scraping and opening some lively eels. At her feet some cats were gnawing and fighting as she threw the heads down to them.

“That is ‘La Counënque,’” announced Master Gafet.

It was somewhat of a shock to poets who, since early morn, had dreamed but of beautiful and noble Arlesiennes. But—here we were!

“Counënque, these gentlemen wish to sup here,” said our guide.

“Are you daft then, Master Gafet? What the devil are you trying to saddle us with! You know I have nothing to set before that sort.”

“See here, old idiot, hast not there a fine dish of eels?”

“Oh, if a hash of eels will make them happy! But mind you, we have nothing else.”

“Ho!” cried Daudet, “nothing we like better than a hash. Come in—come in, and you, Master Gafet, please sit down with us.”

Our friend Gafet willingly allowed himself to be persuaded, and we all five entered the tavern of Trinquetaille.

In a low room, the floor of which was covered with beaten clay, but the walls were very white, stood a long table whereat were seated from fifteen to twenty bargemen in the act of cutting a kid, the landlord Counënc supping with them.

From the beams of the ceiling, blackened by smoke, hung flycatchers in the shape of tamarinds, where the flies settled and were afterwards caught in a bag. We sat down on benches at another table, opposite the bargemen, who, on seeing us, became silent.

While the hash was preparing on the stove, “La Counënque,” to give us an appetite, brought some enormous onions, those grown at Bellegarde, a dish of Jamaica pepper in vinegar, some fermented cheese, preserved olives, botargo of Martinique, and slices of braised haddock.

“And thou who saidst there was nothing to eat!” cried Master Gafet, cutting the bread with his big hooked knife; “but it is a wedding feast!”

“By our Lady,” answered the one-eyed, “if you had let us know beforehand, we might have prepared you a blanquette à la mode—or an omelette—but when people drop down on you in the twilight like a hair in the soup, you understand, gentlemen, one has to give them what one can.”

Daudet, who in his whole life had never before seen such specimens of the Camargue, seized one of the onions—fine flat onions, golden as a Christmas loaf—and boldly crunched and swallowed it, leaf by leaf, with his fine strong teeth, to the accompaniment of some fermented cheese and haddock. It is only fair to mention we also did our best to help him, while Master Gafet, raising every now and again the brimming jug of Crau wine, his face ablaze as I never saw the like.

“Oh these young bloods!” said he, “the onion makes one drink and keeps up the thirst.”

In less than half an hour one could have lighted a match on any one of our cheeks. Then the hash (catigot) arrived, a dish in which a shepherd’s crook could have stood upright, salted like the sea, and peppered like the devil.

“Salting and peppering make one find the wine very good,” said the fat Gafet; “let us clink glasses, my boys.”

The bargemen meantime, having finished their kid, ended their repast, as is the custom of the watermen of Condrieu, with a plate of fat soup. Each one poured a big glass of wine into his plate, then, lifting it with both hands, all together they drank off the mixture at one gulp, smacking their lips with pleasure. The master of a raft, who wore his beard like a collar, then sang a song which, if I remember, finished like this: