The Provençal poets agreed to call themselves _felibre_, nobody knows to this day exactly why. There are those who say that the word means _homme de foi libre_, that is, emancipated from all slavish literary tradition--as Mistral and his first associates undoubtedly were; there are sticklers for antiquity and a direct descent from the Latin, who maintain the derivation _qui facit libros_. Howbeit the _felibre_ began to publish at Avignon in the speech of the district, a periodical, which still, I think, appears at irregular intervals. They constructed a small grammar on the lines of the existing grammars of the ancient “Langue d’oc,” especially of Raynouard’s “Résumé de la Grammaire Romaine,” and they began the compilation of an extensive dictionary, which has never even approached completion. They also revived the institution of an annual poetic tournament with floral prizes--a silver lily, a golden violet--where the native bards recited their verses, and received their rewards, after the supposed manner of the olden time. These jousts were usually held in the late summer or the early autumn. There were others appointed for the yet more appropriate month of May, which received the name of the feast of the _Santo Estello_, or Holy Star,--_memourativo de la reneissenço dou Gai-Sabe_--to commemorate the renascence of the Gay Science. Once in seven years this feast was to be celebrated with extraordinary splendour, “in honour” (I continue to quote from the address of Mistral at the Floral Games held at Hyères in 1885) “of the seven rays of that mysterious star which leads, whithersoever God will, our bark with its orange-freight.” That is to say, which determines, after the manner of the Star of Bethlehem, the place where our society shall assemble and listen to the pieces entered for competition. Were it possible for a new language to be created, or a decaying one revived, of determinate purpose, by native genius, fiery enthusiasm and unstinted devotion to the cause, that miracle would surely have been wrought by the _felibre_ of the _Bouches du Rhône_. But the triumph of a language, like that of the kingdom of heaven, is among the things which do not come by observation. It is determined by causes as vast as those which shape the continents, and quite as independent of the theories of individual men. The order of the Holy Star, was after all only a kind of idealized mutual admiration society, and of all its members during a full quarter of a century, three names only have advanced from local renown to anything like general recognition. They are the three names already cited of Roumanille, Aubanel, and Mistral.