[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, by Little Brown & C^o._ _Goupil & C^o. Paris_ ] [Illustration: “‘_Qué, Valmajour! suppose you play something for the pleasure of the pretty lady._’” Drawn by ADRIEN MOREAU. Photogravured by GOUPIL & CO. NUMA ROUMESTAN. _Frontispiece._ ] NUMA ROUMESTAN BY ALPHONSE DAUDET TRANSLATED BY CHARLES DE KAY [Illustration] BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1899, 1900_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. NUMA ROUMESTAN. CHAPTER I. TO THE ARENA! That Sunday--it was a scorching hot Sunday in July at the time of the yearly competitions for the department--there was a great open-air festival held in the ancient amphitheatre of Aps in Provence. All the town was there--the weavers from the New Road, the aristocrats of the Calade quarter, and some people even came all the way from Beaucaire. “Fifty thousand persons at the lowest estimate,” said the _Forum_ in its account the next day; but then we must allow for Provençal puffing. The truth was that an enormous crowd was crushed together upon the sun-baked stone benches of the old amphitheatre, just as in the palmy days of the Antonines, and it was evident that the meet of the Society of Agriculture was far from being the main attraction to this overflow of the folk. Something more than the Landes horse-races was needed, or the prize-fights for men and “half men,” the athletic games of “strangle the cat” and “jump the swineskin,” or the contests for fifers and tabor-players, as old a story to the townspeople as the ancient red stones of the Arena; something more was needed to keep this multitude standing for two hours under that blinding, murderous sun, upon those burning flags, breathing in an atmosphere of flame and dust flavored with gunpowder, risking blindness, sunstroke, fevers and all the other dangers and tortures attendant on what is called down there in Provence an open-air festival. The grand attraction of the annual competitions was Numa Roumestan. Ah, well; the proverb “No man is a prophet” etc. is certainly true when applied to painters and poets, whose fellow-countrymen in fact are always the last to acknowledge their claims to superiority for whatever is ideal and lacking in tangible results; but it does not apply to statesmen, to political or industrial celebrities, those mighty advertised fames whose currency consists of favors and influence, fames that reflect their glory on city and townsmen in the form of benefits of every sort and kind. For the last ten years Numa, the great Numa, leader and Deputy representing all the professions, has been the prophet of Provence; for ten years the town of Aps has shown toward her illustrious son the tender care and effusiveness of a mother, one of those mothers of the South quick in her expressions, lively in her exclamations and gesticulatory caresses.