“Political and religious discussions are forbidden in the Felibrean meetings.”

The organization is interesting.  The Felibres are divided into Majoraux and Mainteneurs.  The former are limited to fifty in number, and form the Consistory, which elects its own members; new members are received on the feast of St. Estelle.

The Consistory is presided over by a Capoulie, who wears as the emblem of his office a seven-pointed golden star, the other Majoraux, a golden grasshopper.

The other Felibres are unlimited in number.  Any seven Felibres dwelling in the same place may ask the Maintenance to form them into a school.  The schools administer their own affairs.

Every seven years the Floral Games are held, at which prizes are distributed; every year, on the feast of St. Estelle, a general meeting of the Felibrige takes place.  Each Maintenance must meet once a year.

At the Floral Games he who is crowned poet-laureate chooses the Queen, and she crowns him with a wreath of olive leaves.

To-day there are three Maintenances within the limits of French soil, Provence, Languedoc, Aquitaine.

Among other facts that should doubtless be reported here is, the list of Capoulies.  They have been Mistral (1876-1888), Roumanille (1888-1891), and Felix Gras; the Queens have been Madame Mistral, Mlle. Therese Roumanille, Mlle. Marie Girard, and the Comtesse Marie-Therese de Chevigne, who is descended upon her mother’s side from Laura de Sade, generally believed to be Petrarch’s Laura.

Since the organization went into effect the Felibrige has expanded in many ways, its influence has continually grown, new questions have arisen.  Among these last have been burning questions of religion and politics, for although discussions of them are banished from Felibrean meetings, opinions of the most various kind exist among the Felibres, have found expression, and have well-nigh resulted in difficulties.  Until 1876 these questions slept.  Mistral is a Catholic, but has managed to hold more or less aloof from political matters.  Aubanel was a zealous Catholic, and had the title by inheritance of Printer to his Holiness.  Roumanille was a Catholic, and an ardent Royalist.  When the Felibrige came to extend its limits over into Languedoc, the poet Auguste Foures and his fellows proclaimed a different doctrine, and called up memories of the past with a different view.  They affirmed their adherence to the Renaissance meridionale, and claimed equal rights for the Languedocian dialect.  They asserted, however, that the true tradition was republican, and protested vigorously against the clerical and monarchical parties, which, in their opinion, had always been for Languedoc a cause of disaster, servitude, and misery.  The memory of the terrible crusade in the thirteenth century inspired fiery poems among them.  Hatred of Simon de Montfort and of the invaders who followed him, free-thought, and federalism found vigorous expression in all their productions.  In Provence, too, there have been opinions differing widely from those of the original founders, and the third Capoulie, Felix Gras, was a Protestant.  Of him M. Jourdanne writes:—­