ral accompaniment; and sung, in accord with ancient
custom--wherein was the peculiar and especial charm of it--at the
decline of day. The singers sang in the waning sunlight, which
emphasized and enlarged the grandeur of their surroundings: and then all
ended, as the music and the daylight together died away.

IV

In August, 1886, a venture was made at Orange the like of which rarely
has been made in France in modern times: a new French play demanding
positive and strong recognition, the magnificent "Empereur d'Arles," by
the Avignon poet Alexis Mouzin, was given its first presentation in the
Orange theatre--in the provinces--instead of being first produced on the
Paris stage. In direct defiance of the modern French canons of
centralization, the great audience was brought together not to ratify
opinions formulated by Parisian critics but to express its own opinion
at first hand. Silvain, of the Comedie Francaise, was the _Maximien_;
Madame Caristie-Martel, of the Odeon (a grand-daughter of Caristie the
architect who saved the theatre from ruin), was the _Minervine_. The
support was strong. The stately tragedy--vividly contrasting the tyranny
and darkness of pagan Rome with the spirit of light and freedom arising
in Christian Gaul--was in perfect keeping with its stately frame. The
play went on in a whirl of enthusiastic approval to a triumphant end.
There was no question of ratifying the opinion of Parisian critics:
those Southerners formed and delivered an opinion of their own. In other
words, the defiance of conventions was an artistic victory, a
decentralizing success.

Then it was that the Felibres--the poets of Languedoc and of Provence
who for forty years have been combating the Parisian attempt to focus in
Paris the whole of France--perceived how the Orange theatre could be
made to advance their anti-centralizing principles, and so took a hand
in its fortunes: with the avowed intention of establishing outside of
Paris a national theatre wherein should be given in summer dramatic
festivals of the highest class. With the Felibres to attempt is to
accomplish; and to their efforts was due the presentation at Orange in
August 1888, of the "Oedipus" of Sophocles and Rossini's "Moses"--with
Mounet-Sully and Boudouresque in the respective title-roles. The members
of the two Felibrien societies of Paris, the Felibrige and the
Cigaliers, were present in force at the performances--so timed as to be
a part of their cust