CHAPTER V

AT ST. MICHEL DE FRIGOLET

It was an old monastery, situated in the Montagnette, about two hours’ distance from the farm, between Graveson, Tarascon, and Barbentane. At the Revolution the property of Saint-Michel had been sold for a little paper money, and the deserted monastery, spoiled of its goods, uninhabited and solitary, remained desolate up there in the midst of the wilds, open to the four winds and to the wild beasts. Occasionally smugglers used it as a powder factory; shepherds as a shelter for their sheep in the rain; or gamblers from neighbouring towns—Graveson, Maillane, Barbentane, Château-Renard—resorted there to hide and to escape the police. And there, by the light of a few pale candles, while gold pieces clinked to the shuffling of cards, oaths and blasphemies echoed under the arches where so recently psalms had been raised. Their game finished, the libertines then ate, drank and made merry until dawn.

About the year 1832 some mendicant friars established themselves there. They replaced the bell in the old Roman tower, and on Sunday they set it ringing.

But they rang in vain, no one mounted the hill for the services, for no one had faith in them. And the Duchesse De Berry, having just at this time come to Provence to incite the Carlists against the King, Louis-Philippe, I remember that it was whispered that these fugitive brothers, under their black gabardines, were in reality nothing but soldiers (or bandits) plotting for some doubtful intrigue.

It was after the departure of these brothers that a worthy native of Cavaillon, by name Monsieur Donnat, bought the Convent of Saint-Michel on credit and started there a school for boys.

He was an old bachelor, yellow and swarthy in face, with lank hair, flat nose, a large mouth, and big teeth. He wore a long black frock-coat and bronzed shoes. Very devout he was and as poor as a church mouse, but he devised a means for starting his school and collecting pupils without a penny in his purse.

For example, he would go to Graveson, Tarascon, Barbentane, or Saint-Pierre looking up the farmer who had sons.

“I wish to tell you,” he would begin, “that I have opened a school at St. Michel de Frigolet. You have now, at your door, an excellent institution for instructing your boys and helping them to pass their examinations.”

“That is all very fine for rich people, sir,” the father of the family would answer, “but we are poor folk, and can’t afford all that education for our boys. They can always learn enough at home to work on the land.”

“Look here,” says Monsieur Donnat, “there is nothing better than a good education. You need not worry about payment. You will give me every year so many loads of wheat and so many barrels of wine or casks of oil—in that way we will arrange matters.”

The good farmer gladly agreed his boy should go to St. Michel de Frigolet. Monsieur Donnat then went on to a shopkeeper and began in this wise:

“A fine little boy that is of yours!—and he looks wide awake too! Now you don’t want to make a pounder of pepper of him, do you?”

“Ah, sir, if we could we would give him a little education, but colleges are so expensive, and when one isn’t rich——”

“Are you on the look-out for a college?” exclaimed Monsieur Donnat. “Why, send him to my school, up there at Saint-Michel, we will teach him a little Latin and make a man of him! And—as to payment, we will take toll of the shop. You will have in me another customer, and a good customer, I can tell you!”

And without further question the shopkeeper confided his son to Monsieur Donnat.

In this way Monsieur Donnat gathered into his school some forty small boys of the neighbourhood, myself among them. Out of the number, some parents, like my own, paid in money, but quite three-fourths paid in kind—provisions, goods, or their labour. In one word, Monsieur Donnat, before the Republic, social and democratic, had easily, and without any hubbub, solved the problem of the Bank of Exchange, a measure which the famous Proudhon in 1848 preached in vain.

One of the scholars I remember well. I think he was from Nîmes, and we called him Agnel; he was rather like a girl, gentle and pretty, with something sad in his look. Our parents came often to see us and brought us cakes and other good things. But Agnel appeared to have no relations, no one came to see him and he never spoke of those belonging to him. Only on one occasion had a tall strange gentleman of haughty and mysterious aspect appeared at the convent and inquired for Agnel. The interview, which was private, had lasted for about half an hour, after which the tall gentleman had departed and never reappeared. This gave rise to the conjecture that Agnel was a child of superior though illegitimate birth, being brought up in hiding at Saint-Michel. I lost sight of him completely on leaving.

Our instructors consisted, to begin with, of our master, the worthy Monsieur Donnat, who, when at home, took the lower classes, but half the time he was away gleaning pupils. Then there were two or three poor devils, old seminarists, who, having thrown cap and gown to the winds, were well content to earn a few crowns, besides being well housed, fed and washed; we boasted also a priestling, Monsieur Talon by name, who said Mass for us; and, finally, a little hunchback, Monsieur Lavagne, the professor of music. For our cook we had a negro, and to wait at table and do the washing a woman of Tarascon, some thirty years old. To complete this happy family there were the worthy parents of Monsieur Donnat—the father, poor old chap, coifed in a red cap, and assisted by the donkey, was employed to fetch the provisions; and the old white-capped dame acted as barber to us, when necessary.

In those days Saint-Michel was of much less importance than it has since become. There existed merely the cloisters of the old Augustine monks with the little green in the middle, while to the south in a small group rose the refectory, chapter-house, kitchen, stables, and lastly, the dilapidated Church of Saint-Michel. The walls of the latter were covered with frescoes representing a flaming fiery hell of damned souls, and demons armed with pitch-forks, taking active part in the deadly combat between the devil and the great archangel.

Outside this cluster of buildings stood a small buttressed chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Succour, with a porch at the side. Great tufts of ivy covered the walls, and inside it was decorated with rich gildings enclosing pictures, attributed to Mignard, representing the Life of the Virgin. Queen Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV., had so adorned the chapel, in accordance with a vow made to the Virgin should she become the mother of a son.

During the Revolution, this chapel, a real gem hidden among the mountains, had been saved by the good country people, who piled up faggots in front of the porch, so hiding the entrance. Here it was that every morning, at five o’clock in summer and six in winter, we were taken to hear Mass, and here it was that with faith, a real angelic faith, I prayed—we all prayed. Here also, on Sundays, we sang Mass and vespers, each one prayer-book in hand; and here, on the great feast-days, the country people came to admire the voice of the little Frédéric; for I had, at that age, a pretty clear voice like a girl’s. At the Elevation, when we sang motets, it was I who had the solos, and I well remember one in which I specially distinguished myself commencing with these words:

In front of the little chapel grew some nettle-trees, the sweet blossoms of which, hanging in tempting clusters, often lured us to climb the branches, to the destruction of our garments. There was also a well, bored and cut in the rock, which, by a subterranean outlet, poured its waters down into a basin, and, descending further, watered the kitchen garden. Below the garden, at the entrance of the valley, grew a clump of white poplars, brightening up the rather barren landscape.

For Saint-Michel was a wild solitary spot, the old monastery being built on a plateau in a narrow passage between the mountains, far from the haunts of men, as the inscription over the entrance truly testified:

The spurs of the mountains around were covered with thyme, rosemary, asphodel, box and lavender. In some protected corners grew vines, which produced, strange to say, a vintage of some renown—the famous wine of Frigolet. A few olive-trees were planted on the spur of the hills, and here and there in the broken stony ground, rows of almond-trees, tortuous, rugged and stunted. In the clefts of the rocks might be seen occasional wild fig-trees. This was all the vegetation these rocky hills could show, the rest was only waste land and crushed boulders. But how good it smelt, this odour of the mountains, how intoxicating as we drank it in at sunrise!

The generality of schoolboys are penned up in big cold courtyards between four walls, but we had the mountains for our playground. On Thursdays, and every day at recreation hours, no sooner were we let out than we were off like partridges, over valley and mountain, until the convent bell rang out the recall. No danger of our suffering from dulness. In the glorious summer sunshine the ortolan sang afar his “Tsi tsi béau”; and we rolled in the sweet thyme or roamed in search of forgotten almonds and green grapes left on the vines. We gathered mushrooms, set traps for the birds, searched the ravines for those fossils called in all that countryside “Saint Stephen’s stones,” hunted in the grottos for the Golden Goat, and climbed and tumbled about till our parents found it hardly possible to keep us decently clothed or shod.

Ragged and tattered as a troop of young gypsies, how we revelled in that wonderful country of mountains, gorges, and ravines, with their superb Provençal names, so sonorous and characteristic, they seem to bear the impress of the genius of the people. The “Mourre de la Nur,” from whose summit one could see the white coast-line of the Mediterranean, and where at sunset on Saint John’s day we lit the bonfires; the Baume de l’Argent, where formerly they made counterfeit coin; the Roque Pied de Bœuf, on which was the mark of a bull’s hoof; and the Roque d’Acier, dominating the Rhône, with its boats and rafts as they float down the stream: national monuments these, of our land and our language, sweet with the scent of thyme, rosemary and lavender, glowing with colours of gold and azure. O Land where Nature smiles so divinely, what dreams of delight thou didst reveal to my childhood!

But to return to Saint-Michel. We had, as I have said, a certain chaplain, Monsieur Talon, a little abbé from Avignon. He was short, stout, with a rubicund visage like a beggar’s water-gourd. The Archbishop of Avignon had deprived him of his benefice because he was somewhat given to tippling, and sent him to us to be out of the way.

One Saint’s day—a Thursday—we had all been taken over to a neighbouring village, Boulbon, to march in the procession—the big boys swung incense, the little ones scattered flowers, while Monsieur Talon was invited, most imprudently alas! to be the officiating priest.

All the town turned out; men, women, and girls lined the streets, gaily decorated with flags and bunting. The confraternities waved their banners, the fresh voices of the white-robed choristers intoned the Canticles, and with devout heads bowed before the Host; we swung our censers and strewed our flowers, when all at once a murmur ran through the crowd, and, great heavens! down the centre of the street with the Host in his hands, the golden cope on his back, came poor Monsieur Talon swaying like a pendulum.

He had dined at the presbytery, and had no doubt been pressed to too much of that good vintage of Frigolet, which mounts so quickly to the head. The unhappy man, red as much from shame as from the wine, could not hold himself straight. Supported by the deacon and sub-deacon, one on each side, he entered the church with the procession. But finding himself before the altar, Monsieur Talon could say nothing save, “Oremus, oremus, oremus,” and finally they were obliged to remove him to the sacristy.

The scandal this caused may be imagined! Less, however, in that particular district than elsewhere, for all this took place in a parish where the “divine bottle” still celebrates its rites, as in the days of Bacchus. Near Boulbon, in the mountains, stands an old chapel dedicated to Saint-Marcellin, and on the first day of June the men of Boulbon go there in procession, each carrying a bottle of wine.

Women are not allowed to take part in this ceremony for, according to the Roman tradition, our women formerly drank nothing but water, and to reconcile the young girls to this ancient régime they were told, and are still told, that water is good for the complexion.

The Abbé Talon never failed to escort us every year to the Procession of Bottles. Having taken our places in the chapel, the Curé of Boulbon, turning to the congregation, would say:

“My brethren—uncork your bottles, and let there be silence for the benediction.”

Then, having donned a red cope, he solemnly chanted the prescribed formula for the benediction of the wine, and after saying “Amen,” we all made the sign of the cross and took a pull at our bottles. The curé and the mayor, after clinking glasses religiously on the steps of the altar, also drank. On the morrow, when the fête was over, if there happened to be a drought at the time, the bust of Saint-Marcellin was borne in a procession through all the country-side, for the Boulbonnais declare that good Saint-Marcellin blesses both wine and water.

Another pilgrimage, also of a festive nature, and now quite gone out of fashion, was that of Saint-Anthime. It took place at Montagnette, and was got up by the people of Graveson, when there happened to be a scarcity of rain.

Intoning their litanies and followed by a crowd of people, their heads covered with sacks, the priests would carry Saint-Anthime, a highly coloured bust with prominent eyes, beard, and mitre, to the Church of Saint-Michel, and there the whole blessed day, the provisions spread out on the fragrant grass, they would await the rain, and devoutly drink the wine of Frigolet. And I can stake my word that, more than once, the return journey was made in a flood of rain; this may have been owing to the hymns, for our forefathers had a saying that, “Singing brings the rain.”

If, however, Saint-Anthime, in spite of litanies and pious libations, did not manage to collect the clouds, then the jolly penitents, on their return to Graveson, would punish him for his lack of power by plunging him three times in the brook of Lones. This curious custom of dipping the images of saints in water, to compel them to send rain, prevailed in many districts, at Toulouse, for instance, and I have heard of it even in Portugal.

Our mothers never failed to take us in our childhood to the church at Graveson, there to show us Saint-Anthime and also Béluget, a Jack-of-the-Clock, who struck the hours in the belfry.

In concluding my experiences at Saint-Michel, I recollect, in a dreamlike fashion, that towards the end of my first year, just before the holidays, we played a comedy called The Children of Edward, by Casimir Delavigne. To me was allotted the part of a young princess, and my mother supplied me for the occasion with a muslin dress which she borrowed from a little girl of our neighbourhood. This white dress was, later, the cause of a pretty little romance, which I will tell further on.

In the second year of my schooling, having begun to learn Latin, I wrote to my parents to send me some books, and a few days after, looking down into the valley, behold I saw mounting the path to the convent, my father astride on Babache, the good old mule of thirty years’ service, well known at all the market towns around. For my father always rode Babache, whether to the market, or going the round of his fields with the long weeding-fork, which he used from his saddle, cutting down the thistles and weeds.

Upon reaching the convent, my father emptied an enormous sack which he had brought with him on his saddle.

“See, Frédéric,” he called, “I have brought thee a few books and some paper!”

Therewith he pulled from the sack, one after the other, four or five dictionaries bound in parchment, a mass of paper books—“Epitome,” “De Viris Illustribus,” “Selecta Historiæ,” “Conciones,” &c.—a huge bottle of ink, a bundle of goose quills, and enough writing paper to last me seven years, to the end of my school time in fact. It was from Monsieur Aubanel, printer at Avignon, and father of the future famous and beloved Félibre, at that time unknown to me, that my worthy parent had with such promptness made this provision for my education.

At our pleasant monastery of St. Michel de Frigolet, however, I had no leisure to use much writing material. Monsieur Donnat, our master, for one reason or another, was seldom at his own establishment, and, as the proverb truly says, “When the cat is away, the mice will play.” The masters, badly paid, had always some excuse for cutting short the lesson, and when the parents visited the school, there was often no one to be seen. On their inquiring for the boys, some of us would be found actively engaged in repairing the stone wall which upheld a slanting field, while others would be among the vines revelling in the discovery of forgotten little bunches of grapes or mushrooms. Unfortunately, these circumstances did not conduce to much confidence in our headmaster. Another thing which contributed to the decline of the school was that, in order to increase the numbers, poor Monsieur Donnat took pupils who paid little or nothing, and these were not the boys who ate least.

The end came at last in a characteristic manner. We had, as I have said, a negro as cook, and one fine day this individual, without warning, packed his box and disappeared. This was the signal for a general disbanding. No cook meant no broth for us, and the professors one by one left us in the lurch. Monsieur Donnat was, as usual, absent. His mother, poor old soul, tried her hand for a day or two at boiling potatoes, but one morning the old father Donnat told us sadly: “My children, there are no more potatoes to boil—you had better all go home!”

And at once, like a flock of kids let loose from the fold, we ran off to gather tufts of thyme from the hills to carry away as a remembrance of this beautiful and beloved country—for Frigolet signifies in the Provençal tongue a place where thyme abounds.

Then, shouldering our little bundles, by twos and threes we scattered over the valleys and hills, some up, some down, but none of us without many a backward look and sigh of regret at departing.

Poor Monsieur Donnat! After all his efforts in every direction to make his school a success, he ended his days, alas! in the almshouse.

But before taking leave of St. Michel de Frigolet, I must add one word as to what became of the old monastery. After being abandoned for twelve years it was bought by a White Monk, Father Edmond. In 1854 he restored it under the Law of Saint-Norbert, the Order of Prémontré, which had ceased to exist in France. Thanks to the activity, the preaching and collecting of this zealous missioner, the little monastery fast grew into importance. Numerous buildings, crowned with embattled walls, were added; a new church, magnificently ornamented, raised its three naves, surmounted by a couple of big clock-towers. A hundred monks or lay brothers peopled the cells, and every Sunday all the neighbourhood mounted the hillside to witness the pomp of the High Mass. In 1880 the Abbot of the White Brothers had become so popular that upon the Republic ordering the closing of the convents, over a thousand peasants came up from the plain and shut themselves in the monastery to protest in person against the radical decree. And it was then that we saw a whole army in marching order—cavalry, infantry, generals and captains, with baggage waggons and all the apparatus of war—camping around the monastery of St. Michel de Frigolet, seriously going through this comic-opera siege, which four or five policemen, had they chosen, could easily have brought to a termination.

Every morning during this siege, which lasted a week, the country people, taking their provisions, posted themselves on the hills and spurs of the mountains which dominated the monastery, and watched from afar the progress of events. The prettiest sight I well remember was the girls from Barbentane, Boulbon, Saint-Rémy, and Maillane, encouraging the besieged with enthusiastic singing and waving of kerchiefs:

This was alternated with invectives, jokes, and hootings addressed to the officers, as the latter marched past with fierce aspect. Excepting only the genuine indignation aroused by the injustice of these proceedings in every heart, it would be hard to find a more burlesque siege than this of Frigolet, which furnished the subject of Sinnibaldi Doria’s “Siege of Caderousse,” and also a heroic poem by the Abbé Faire, neither of them half as comic as the original. Alphonse Daudet, who had already written of the convent of the White Brothers in his story “The Elixir of Brother Gaucher,” also gave us, in his last romance on Tarascon, the hero Tartarin valiantly joining the besieged in the Convent of Saint-Michel.

CHAPTER VI

AT MONSIEUR MILLET’S SCHOOL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In winter he seldom got up before midday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He always had his flute on the table beside him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For the poor prisoners!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“‘Happy journey, boys.’

“And the men added:

“‘May the good saint uphold you.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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