After the meal, I fetched the exercise book and put it on the table in front of Mistral. --We'd said we'd go out, said the poet, smiling. --Oh, no. _Calendal! Calendal!_ Mistral resigned himself to his fate and in his sweet musical voice, while beating the rhythm with his hand, he began the first canto: Of a maid who fell in love and madly, And a tale I told that turned out sadly, Now of a child of Cassis, If God's will it may be, As a poor little boy casts out for anchovy... Outside, the vesper bells ring, the fireworks explode in the square, and the fifes play marching up and down the streets with the tambourines. The bulls from the Camargue bellow as they are herded along. But I was listening to the story of the little fisherman from Provence, with my elbows on the table cloth, and my eyes filling with tears. * * * * * Calendal wasn't just a fisherman; love had forged him into an heroic figure.... To win the heart of his beloved--the beautiful Estérelle--he took on Herculean tasks, in fact, those twelve famous labours paled by comparison to his. One time, having it in mind to get rich, he invented some ingenious fishing devices to bring all the fish of the sea into port. Then there was this terrible bandit, count Sévéran, who was going to re-launch his evil trade amongst his cut-throats and molls.... What a tough guy our little Calendal turns out to be! One day, at Sainte-Baume, he came across two gangs of men intent on violently settling their hash on the grave of Master Jacques, a Provencal who did the carpentry in the Temple of Solomon, if you please. Calendal threw himself into the heart of the murderous mayhem, and calmed the men and talked them down.... These were superhuman efforts!... High up in the rocks of Lure, there was an inaccessible cedar forest, where even lumberjacks wouldn't go. Calendal, though, does go up there, all alone, and sets up camp for thirty days. The sound of his axe burying its head into tree trunks is heard the whole time. The forest screams its protest, but, one by one, the giant old trees fall and roll into the abyss, until, by the time Calendal comes down, there isn't a single cedar left on the mountain.... At last, in reward for so many exploits, the anchovy fisherman won the love of Estérelle and was made Consul of Cassis by its inhabitants. That's it then, the story of Calendal.... But why all this fuss about Calendal? The star of the poem is Provence itself--the Provence of the sea; the Provence of the mountains--with its history, its ways, its legends, its scenery, indeed a whole people, free and true to themselves, who have found their poetic voice, before they die.... Nowadays, follow the roads, the railways, the telegraph poles, hunt down the language in the schools! Provence will live for ever in _Mireille_ and _Calendal_. * * * * * --That's enough poetry! said Mistral closing his notebook. To the fair!