restling, the hop, skip and jump, and games of strangle
the cat, and pig in the middle, and all the rest of the fun events of
the Provencal fairs.... Night was falling by the time we got back to
Maillane.

A huge bonfire had been lit in the square, in front of the cafe where
Mistral and his friend Zidore were having a party that night... The
farandole started up. Paper cut-out lanterns lit up everywhere in the
shadows; the young people took their places; and soon, after a trill on
the tambourines, a wild, boisterous, round dance started up around the
fire. It was a dance that would last all through the night.

* * * * *

After supper, and too tired to keep going, we went into Mistral's
modest peasant's bedroom, with two double beds. The walls are bare, and
the ceiling beams are visible.... Four years ago, after the academy had
given the author of _Mireille_ a prize worth three thousand francs,
Madame Mistral had an idea:

--Why don't we wallpaper your bedroom and put a ceiling in? she said to
her son.

--Oh, no! replied Mistral.... That's poet's money that is, and not to
be touched.

And so the bedroom stayed strictly bare; but as long as the poet's
money lasted, anyone needy, knocking on Mistral's door, has always
found his purse open....

I had brought the notebook with _Calendal_ into the bedroom to read to
myself a passage of it before going to sleep. Mistral chose the episode
about the pottery. Here it is, in brief:

It is during a meal, somewhere or another. A magnificent Moustier's
crockery service is brought out and placed onto the table. At the
bottom of every plate, there is a Provencal scene, painted in blue on
the enamel. The whole history of the land is represented on them. Each
plate of this beautiful crockery has its own verse and the love in
those descriptions just has to be seen. There are just so many simple
but clever little poems, done with all the charm of the rural idylls of
Theocritus.

Whilst Mistral spoke his verses in this beautiful Provencal tongue,
more than three quarters Latin, and once spoken by queens, and now only
understood by shepherds, I was admiring this man, and considering the
ruinous state in which he found his mother tongue and what he had done
with it. I was also imagining one of those old palaces of the Princes
of Baux which can be seen in the Alpilles: there were no more roofs, no
stepped balustrades, no glass in the windows; the trefoils broke