to go
and cheer myself up in the company of Frederic Mistral, the great poet
who lives a few kilometres from my precious pines, in the small village
of Maillane.

No sooner said than gone; my myrtle walking stick, my book of
Montaigne, a blanket, and off I went!

The fields were deserted.... Our beautiful catholic Provence gives the
very earth itself a day of rest on Sundays.... The dogs are abandoned
in the houses, and the farms are closed.... Here and there, was a
carter's wagon with its dripping tarpaulin, an old hooded woman in a
mantle like a dead leaf, mules dressed up for a gala, covered in blue
and white esparto, red pompoms, and silver bells, jogging along with a
cart-load of folks from the farm going to mass. Further on, there was a
small boat on the irrigation canal with a fisherman casting his net
from it....

There was no possibility of reading as I walked. The rain came down in
bucketsful, which the tramontana then obligingly threw in your face....
I walked non-stop and after three hours I reached the small cypress
woods which surround the district of Maillane and shelter it from the
frightful wind.

Nothing was stirring in the village streets; everybody was at high
mass. As I passed in front of the church, I heard a serpent playing,
and I saw candles shining through the stained glass windows. The poet's
home is on the far side of the village; it's the last house on the
left, on the road to Saint-Remy--it's a small single-storey house with
a front garden.... I went in quietly ... and saw no one. The dining
room door was shut, but I could hear someone walking about and speaking
loudly behind it ... a voice and a step that I knew only too well....

I paused in the whitewashed corridor, with my hand on the doorknob, and
feeling very emotional. My heart was thumping.--He's in. He's working.
Should I wait. Wait till he's finished.... What the hell. It can't be
helped. I went in.

* * * * *

Well, Parisians, when the Maillane poet came over to show Paris his
book, _Mireille_, and you saw him in your salons; this noble savage,
but in town clothes, with a wing collar and top hat, which disturbed
him and much as his reputation. Do you think that was Mistral? It
wasn't.

There's only one real Mistral in the world, and that's the one that I
surprised last Sunday in his village, with his felt beret, no
waistcoat, a jacket, a red Catalonian sash round his waist, and
fiery-eyed, with th