The fact that Mistral and his great collaborators in the Félibre movement, Roumanille, Aubanel, Félix Gras, Anselme Mathieu and others, wrote entirely in the language of their beloved Provence, no doubt accounts for their works being so little known outside their own country, though latterly the name of Mistral has been brought prominently forward by his election as a recipient last year of the Nobel Prize for patriotic literature, and also by his refusal to accept a Chair among the Olympians of the French Academy. In spite of his rejection of the latter honour, which was a matter of principle, he could scarcely fail to have been gratified by the compliment paid in offering to him what is never offered without being first solicited, the would-be member being obliged to present himself for election and also to endeavour personally to win the support of each of the sacred Forty. Of all Mistral’s works his first epic poem, _Mireille_, is the best known outside France, chiefly no doubt because the invincible charm and beauty of this work make themselves felt even through the imperfect medium of a prose translation, and partly perhaps because Gounod gave it a certain vogue by adapting it as the libretto for his opera of _Mireille_. President Roosevelt has shown his appreciation not only of _Mireille_ but of the life-work of the author in the following letter, a French translation of which is to be seen framed in Mistral’s Provençal Museum at Arles. WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, _December 15, 1904_. MY DEAR M. MISTRAL,--Mrs. Roosevelt and I were equally pleased with the book and the medal, and none the less because for nearly twenty years we have possessed a copy of _Mireille_. That copy we shall keep for old association’s sake; though this new copy with the personal inscription by you must hereafter occupy the place of honour. All success to you and your associates! You are teaching the lesson that none need more to learn than we of the West, we of the eager, restless, wealth-seeking nation; the lesson that after a certain not very high level of material well-being has been reached, then the things that really count in life are the things of the spirit. Factories and railways are good up to a certain point; but courage and endurance, love of wife and child, love of home and country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in man’s work and in nature, love and emulation of daring and of lofty endeavour, the homely workaday virtues and the heroic virtues--these are better still, and if they are lacking no piled-up riches, no roaring, clanging industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall avail either the individual or the nation. I do not undervalue these things of a nation’s body; I only desire that they shall not make us forget that beside the nation’s body there is also the nation’s soul.