And then and there--at that time I was one and twenty--with my foot on the threshold of the paternal home, and my eyes looking towards the Alpilles, I formed the resolution, first, to raise and revivify in Provence the sentiment of race that I saw being annihilated by the false and unnatural education of all the schools; secondly, to promote that resurrection by the restoration of the native and historic language of the country, against which the schools waged war to the death; and lastly, to make that language popular by illuminating it with the divine flame of poetry. All these ideas hummed vaguely in my soul. This eddying and surging of the Provençal sap filled my being, and, free from all conventional literary influences, strong in the independence which gave me wings, and assured that nothing could now deter me, the sight of the labourers one evening, singing as they followed the plough in the furrow, inspired me with the opening song of _Mireille_. This poem, the child of love, was peaceably and leisurely brought to birth under the influence of the warm golden sunshine and the breath of the wide sweeping winds of Provence. At the same time I took over the charge of the farm, under the direction of my father, who, at eighty years of age, had become blind. It was a life well suited to me, and this was all I cared for--to be happy in my home and with certain chosen friends. We were indifferent to Paris in those days of innocence. My highest ambition was that Arles, which rose ever on my horizon as did Mantua on that of Virgil, should one day recognise my poetry as her own. Thus, thinking only of the country people of the Crau and the Camargue, I could truly say in _Mireille_: “We sing but for you, shepherds and people of the farms.” I had no definite plan in commencing _Mireille_, except the broad lines of a love-story between two beautiful children of Provence, both with the temperament of their country though of different ranks in life, and to let the ball roll in the unpremeditated way that happens in real life, apparently at the pleasure of the winds. Mireille, the happy name which breathes its own poetry, was destined to be that of my heroine, for I had heard it in our home from my cradle, though nowhere else. When old Nanon, my maternal grandmother, wished to compliment one of her daughters she would say: “That is Mireille, the beautiful Mireille of my heart!” And my mother in fun would say sometimes of a young girl: “There, do you see her? That is the Mireille of my heart.” But when I questioned concerning Mireille, no one could tell me anything; hers was a lost history of which nothing remained but the name of the heroine, and a gleam of beauty lost in a mist of love. It was enough, however, to bring good fortune to a poem, which perhaps--who can tell?--was the reconstruction of a true romance, revealed through the intuition granted to the poet.