After the overture, sung by a choir to the words of Jean-Batiste, and beginning: Troubadours of Provence For us this day is glorious. Behold the glad Renaissance Of the language of the South! the President d’Astros discoursed delightfully in Provençal, and then, in turn, each poet contributed some piece of his own. Roumanille, much applauded, recited one of his tales, and sang “La Jeune Aveugle;” Aubanel gave us “Des Jumeaux,” and I the “Fin du Moissonneur.” But the greatest successes were produced by the song of the peasant Tavan, “Les Frisons de Mariette,” and the recitation of the mason Lacroix, who made us all shiver with his “Pauvre Martine.” Emile Zola, then a scholar at the College of Aix, was present at this meeting, and forty years afterwards this is what he said in the discourse he gave at the Felibrée of Sceaux (1892): “I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and I can see myself as a school-boy escaping from college in order to be present in the great room of the Town Hall at Aix at a poets’ fête, somewhat resembling the one I have the honour to preside over to-day. Mistral was there, declaiming his ‘Fin du Moissonneur’; Roumanille and Aubanel also, and many others who, a few years later, were to be the ‘Félibres’ and who were then but ‘Troubadours.’ At the banquet that night we had the pleasure of raising our glasses to the health of old Bellot, who had made a great name, not only in Marseilles but throughout Provence, as a comic poet, and who, overcome at seeing this outburst of patriotic enthusiasm, replied to us somewhat sadly: “‘I am but a bungler. In my poor life I have blackened much paper. But Gaut, Mistral, Crousillat, they who have the fire of youth, will unwind the tangled skein of our Provençal tongue.’” CHAPTER XII FONT-SEGUGNE We were a set of youthful spirits at that time in Provence, all closely banded together with the object of a literary revival for our national tongue. We went at it heart and soul. Nearly every Sunday, sometimes at Avignon, sometimes at Maillane, in the gardens of Saint-Rémy or on the heights of Châteauneuf, we met together for our small intimate festivities, our Provençal banquets, at which the poetry was of a finer flavour than the meats, and our enthusiasm intoxicated a good deal more than the wine. It was on these occasions that Roumanille regaled us with his “Noëls” and “Dreamers” freshly coined from the mint, and that Aubanel, still holding the faith, but tugging at the leading-strings, recited to us his “Massacre of the Innocents.” _Mireille_ also, from time to time, appeared in newly turned-out strophes.