Three years previously (1875) the intellectual sovereignty of Mistral had impressed itself on all the south of France by the publication of his collected poems “Lis Isclo d’Or” (“The Golden Isles”) which revealed the serene genius of the master, his extraordinary versatility and his unquestionable title to represent his race. Shortly after, at Avignon, the poet was proclaimed Grand Master (_Capoulié_) of the literary federation of the Meridional provinces, and became the uncontested chief of a crusade of the Oc country for the reconquest of its historic dignity and position. The sort of pontificate with which Mistral was from henceforth invested in no way arrested the outflowing of his songs. A new poem, _Nerto_, lighter in form than hitherto, in the style of the romantic epics of the renaissance, suddenly drew the attention of the critics again to the poet of Provence, and the charm and infinite variety of his genius. Having already compared him to Homer, to Theocritus, and to Longus, they now found in his work the illusive seduction of Ariosto. A visit that he paid to Paris in 1884, after an absence of twenty years, sealed his fame in France and his glory in Provence. He was surrounded by an army of followers. Paris, which knew hitherto only the poet, now recognised a new literature in the person of its chief. The French Academy crowned _Nerto_ as before they had crowned _Mireille_. Mistral celebrated there in the French capital the fourth centenary of the union of Provence and France; “as a joining together of one principality to another principality,” according to the terms of the ancient historical contract. He returned to his Provence consecrated chief of a people. The Provençal Renaissance continued to extend daily. Mistral endowed the movement at last with the scientific and popular weapon essential for its defence, a national dictionary. It was the crowning work of his life, “The Treasury of Félibrige.” All the various dialects of the Oc language are represented in this vast collection of an historic tongue, rich, melodious, vital, rescued and reinstated by its indefatigable defenders at a moment when all conspired to hasten its decrepitude. All the meanings and acceptations, accompanied by examples culled from every writer in the Oc language, every idiom and proverb, are patiently collected together in this encyclopædic _tresaurus_ which could never be replaced. The Institute awarded him a prize of four hundred francs. In 1890 Mistral published a work he had for some time contemplated, _La Rèino Jano_ (_Queen Joan_) a Provençal tragedy. In spite of the rare beauty and picturesque eloquence of many of the cantos, this poem, evoking as it does the Angevine Provence of the fourteenth century, obtained only half the success of _Nerto_ from the public. The French do not share with the Félibres the cult of Queen Joan.