(They say she is dead, (Ah, if they could understand
  but I believe she me!  Ah, if they would follow
  lives.) me!)
]

[Footnote 4:  In 1899, Felix Gras published a novel called The White Terror.  His death occurred early in 1901.]

CHAPTER III

THE MODERN PROVENCAL LANGUAGE

The language of the Felibres is based upon the dialect spoken in the plain of Maillane, in and about the town of Saint-Remy.  This dialect is one of the numerous divisions of the langue d’oc, which Mistral claims is spoken by nearly twelve millions of people.  The literary history of these patois has been written by B. Noulet, and shows that at the close of the terrible struggles of the Albigenses the language seemed dead.  In 1324 seven poets attempted to found at Toulouse the competitions of the Gai Savoir, and so to revive the ancient poetry and the ancient language.  Their attempt failed.  There was literary production of varying degree of merit throughout two or three centuries; but until the time of Jasmin no writer attracted any attention beyond his immediate vicinity; and it is significant that the Felibres themselves were long in ignorance of Jasmin.  It is then not difficult to demonstrate that the Felibrige revival bears more the character of a creation than of an evolution.  It is not at all an evolution of the literature of the Troubadours; it is in no way like it.  The language of the Felibres is not even the descendant of the special dialect that dominated as a literary language in the days of the Troubadours; for it was the speech of Limousin that formed the basis of that language, and only two of the greater poets among the Troubadours, Raimond de Vaqueiras and Fouquet de Marseille, were natives of Provence proper.

The dialect of Saint-Remy is simply one of countless ramifications of the dialects descended from the Latin.  Mistral and his associates have made their literary language out of this dialect as they found it, and not out of the language of the Troubadours.  They have regularized the spelling, and have deliberately eliminated as far as possible words and forms that appeared to them to be due to French influence, substituting older and more genuine forms—­forms that appeared more in accord with the genius of the langue d’oc as contrasted with the langue d’oil.  Thus, glori, istori, paire, replace gloaro, istouero, pero, which are often heard among the people.  This was the first step.  The second step taken arose from the necessity of making this speech of the illiterate capable of elevated expression.  Mistral claims to have used no word unknown to the people or unintelligible to them, with the exception that he has used freely of the stock of learned words common to the whole Romance family of languages.  These words, too,