s a very sympathetic
creation, and surely quite original. This tale, however, running through
the poem like a thread, is not the poem, nor does it fill
proportionately a large place therein. The poem is, as its title
proclaims, the Poem of the Rhone, a poem of sincere regret for the good
old days when the muscular sons of Condrieu ruled the stream, the days
of jollity, of the curious boating tournaments of which one is described
in _Calendau_, when the children used to watch the boats go by with a
Condrillot at the helm, and the Rhone was swarming like a mighty
beehive. The poet notes in sorrow that all is dead. The river flows on,
broad and silent, and no vestige of all its past activity remains, but
here and there a trace of the cables that used to rub along the stones.

As we said at the outset, what is most striking about this poem is its
realism. The poet revels in enumerating the good things the men had to
eat at the feast of Saint Nicholas; he describes with a wealth of
vocabulary and a flood of technical terms quite bewildering every sort
of boat, and all its parts with their uses; he reproduces the talk of
the boatmen, leaving unvarnished their ignorance and superstition,
their roughness and brutality; he describes their appearance, their
long hair and large earrings; he explains the manner of guiding the
boats down the swirling, treacherous waters, amid the dangers of shoals
and hidden rocks; he describes all the cargoes, not finding it beneath
the dignity of an epic poem to tell us of the kegs of foamy beer that is
destined for the thirsty throats of the drinkers at Beaucaire; as the
boats pass Condrieu, he reproduces the gossip of the boatmen's wives; he
does not omit the explanations of Apian addressed to the Prince
concerning fogs and currents; he is often humorous, telling us of the
heavy merchants who promenade their paunches whereon the watch-charms
rattle against their snug little money carried in a belt; he describes
the passengers, tells us their various trades and destinations, is even
cynical; tells of the bourgeois, who, once away from their wives, grow
suddenly lavish with their money, and like pigs let loose in the street,
take up the whole roadway; he does not shrink from letting us know that
the men chew a cud of tobacco while they talk; he mentions the price of
goods; he puts into the mouth of Jean Roche's mother a great many
practical and material considerations as to the matter of taking a