Add to all these a mass of aquatic plants, such as the cats-tail, that long cottony blossom of the typha-plant; and the water-lily, its wide round leaves and white cup magnificently outspread on the water’s smooth surface; the gladiole with its clusters of pink flowers and the pale narcissus mirrored in the stream; the duckweed with its minute leaves; the ox-tongue, which flowers like a lustre; and the forget-me-not, myosotis, named in Provence “eyes of the Child Jesus.” But of all this wonder-world, what held my fancy most was the water-iris, a large plant growing at the water’s edge in big clumps, with long sword-shaped leaves and beautiful yellow blooms raising high their heads like golden halberds. The golden lilies, which on an azure field form the arms of France and of Provence, were undoubtedly suggested by these same water-iris, for the lily and the iris are really of the same family, and the azure of the coat-of-arms faithfully represents the water by the edge of which the iris grows. It was a summer’s day, about the harvest time. All the people of the farm-house were out at work, helping to bind up the sheaves. Some twenty men, bare-armed, marched by twos and fours, round the horses and mules who were treading hard. Some took off the ears of corn or tossed the straw with their long wooden forks, while others, bare-foot, danced gaily in the sunshine on the fallen grain. High in the air, upheld by the three supports of a rustic crane, the winnowing cradle was suspended. A group of women and girls with baskets threw the corn and husks into the net of the sieve, and the master, my father, vigorous and erect, swung the sieve towards the wind, turning the bad grains on to the top. When the wind abated or at intervals ceased, my father, with the motionless sieve in his hands, facing the wind and gazing out into the blue, would say in all seriousness, as though addressing a friendly god: “Come, blow, blow, dear wind.” And I have seen the “mistral,” on my word, in obedience to the wish of the patriarch, again and again draw breath, thus carrying off the refuse while the blessed fine wheat fell in a white shower on the conical heap visibly rising in the midst of the winnowers. At sunset, after the grain had been heaped up with shovels, and the men, all powdered with dust, had gone off to wash at the well and draw water for the beasts, my father with great strides [Illustration: MAS DU JUGE--BIRTHPLACE OF FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL.] would measure the heap of corn, tracing upon it a cross with the handle of the spade and uttering the words: “God give thee increase.” I must have been scarcely four years old and still wearing petticoats, when one lovely afternoon during this threshing season, after rolling as children love to do in the new straw, I directed my steps towards the draw-well moat. For some days past the fair water-iris had commenced to open, and my hands tingled to pluck some of the lovely golden buds.