They needed a name to call themselves by.  They had all met together to talk things over in the old castle of Font-Segugne, or, as Mistral more picturesquely puts it:  “It was written in heaven that one blossoming Sunday, the twenty-first of May, 1854, in the full springtide of life and of the year, seven poets should come to meet together in the castle of Font-Segugne.”  Several suggestions were made for a name for this brotherhood, but presently Mistral announced that in an old folk-story he had collected at his birthplace, Maillane, he believed that he had found the word they were in search of.  In this folk-story the boy Christ is represented as discoursing in the temple with “the seven felibres of the Law.”

“Why, that is us!” exclaimed the enthusiastic young men as Mistral finished, and there on the spot “felibre” was adopted as the password of their order, Mistral coining the word “felibrige” to represent the work they aimed to do, and also their association.  The name stuck, and has now for many years been the banner-word for the vigorous school of Provencal literature and the allied arts of painting and sculpture which has responded with such eager vitality to Mistral’s rallying cry.

But, excellent as are the other poets which the school has produced—­and one need only glance through a recent Anthologie du Felibrige to realize what a wealth of true poetry the word “felibrige” now stands for—­there can be no question that its greatest asset still remains Mistral’s own work, as it was his first great poem, Mireio, which first drew the eyes of literary Paris, more than inclined to be contemptuous, to the Provencal renaissance.

Adolphe Dumas had been sent to Provence in the year 1856 by the Minister of Public Instruction to collect the folk-songs of the people, and calling on Mistral (then twenty-six), living quietly with his widowed mother at Maillane, he had found him at work on Mireio.  Mistral read some passages to him, with the result that the generous Dumas returned to Paris excitedly to proclaim the advent of a new poet.  Presently, Mistral accepted his invitation to visit Paris, was introduced to the great Lamartine—­who has left some charming pages descriptive of his visit,—­read some of Mireio to him, and was hailed by him as “the Homer of Provence.”

The press, however, had its little fling at the new-comer.  “The Mistral it appears,” said one pitiful punster, “has been incarnated in a poem.  We shall soon see whether it is anything else but wind.”  Such has been the invariable welcome of great men in a small world.

But Mistral had no taste for Paris, either as a lion or a butt, and, after a few days’ stay, we find him once more quietly at home at Maillane.  Yet he had brought back with him one precious trophy—­the praise of Lamartine; and when, in the course of a year or two (1859), Mireio came to be published at Avignon, it bore, as it still bears, this heart-felt dedication to Lamartine: