the notes of _Mireio_. This poem is called
_Li Meissoun_ (Harvest). His family, seeing his intellectual
superiority, sent him to Aix to study law. Here he again met Mathieu,
and they made up for the aridity of the Civil Code by devoting
themselves to poetry in Provencal.

In 1851 the young man returned to the _mas_, a _licencie en droit_, and
his father said to him: "Now, my dear son, I have done my duty; you know
more than ever I learned. Choose your career; I leave you free." And the
poet tells us he threw his lawyer's gown to the winds and gave himself
up to the contemplation of what he so loved,--the splendor of his native
Provence.

Through Roumanille he came to know Aubanel, Croustillat, and others.
They met at Avignon, full of youthful enthusiasm, and during this period
Mistral, encouraged by his friends, worked upon his greatest poem,
_Mireio_. In 1854, on the 21st of May, the Felibrige was founded by the
seven poets,--Joseph Roumanille, Paul Giera, Theodore Aubanel, Eugene
Garcin, Anselme Mathieu, Frederic Mistral, Alphonse Tavan. In 1868,
Garcin published a violent attack upon the Felibres, accusing them, in
the strongest language, of seeking to bring about a political separation
of southern France from the rest of the country. This apostasy was a
cause of great grief to the others, and Garcin's name was stricken from
the official list of the founders of the Felibrige, and replaced by that
of Jean Brunet. Mistral, in the sixth canto of _Mireio_, addresses in
eloquent verse his comrades in the Provencal Pleiade, and there we still
find the name of Garcin.

Tu' nfin, de quau un vent de flamo
Ventoulo, emporto e fouito l'amo
Garcin, o fieu ardent dou manescau d'Alen!

(And finally, thou whose soul is stirred and swept and whipped by a
wind of flame, Garcin, ardent son of the smith of Alleins.)

This attack upon the Felibrige was the first of the kind ever made. Many
years later, Garcin became reconciled to his former friends and in 1897
he was vice-president of the _Felibrige de Paris_.

The number seven and the task undertaken by these poets and literary
reformers remind us instantly of the Pleiade, whose work in the
sixteenth century in attempting to perfect the French language was of a
very similar character. It is certain, however, that the seven poets
who inaugurated their work at the Chateau of Font-Segugne, had no
thought of imitating the Pleiade either in the choice of th