The next canto is called La Descoucounado (The Opening of the Cocoons), and it must be confessed that there is a slight falling off in interest.  All that describes the life of the country-folk is full of sustained charm, but Mistral has not escaped the dangers that beset the modern poet who aims at the epic style.  Here begins the recounting of the numerous superstitions of the ignorant peasants, and the wonders of Provence are interpolated at every turn.  The maidens, while engaged in stripping the cocoons, make known a long list of popular beliefs, and then branch off into a conversation about love.  They are surprisingly well acquainted with the writings of Jean de Nostradamus, to whom the Felibres are indebted for a lot of erroneous ideas concerning the Troubadours and the Courts of Love.  This literary conversation is not convincing, and we are pleased when Noro sings the pretty song of Magali, which, composed to be sung to an air well known in Provence, has become very popular.  The idea is not new; the young girl sings of successive forms she will assume, to avoid the attentions of her suitor, and he, ingeniously, finds the transformation necessary to overcome her.  For instance, when she becomes a rose, he changes into a butterfly to kiss her.  At last the maiden becomes convinced of the love of her pursuer, and is won.

The fourth canto, Li Demandaire (The Suitors), recalls the Homeric style, and is among the finest of the poem.  Alari, the shepherd, Veran, the keeper of horses, and Ourrias, who has herds of bulls in the Camargue, present themselves successively for the hand of Mireio.  The “transhumance des troupeaux” is described in verse full of vigorous movement; the sheep are taken up into the Alps for the summer, and then in the fall brought down to the great plain of the Crau near the Delta of the Rhone.  The whole description is made with bold, simple strokes of the brush, offering a vivid picture not to be forgotten.  Alari, too, offers a marvellously carved wooden cup, adorned with pastoral scenes.  Veran owns a hundred white mares, whose manes, thick and flowing like the grass of the marshes, are untouched by the shears, and float above their necks, as they bound fiercely along, like a fairy’s scarf.  They are never subdued, and often, after years of exile from the salt meadows of the Camargue, they throw off their rider, and gallop over twenty leagues of marshes to the land of their birth, to breathe the free salt air of the sea.  Their element is the sea; they have surely broken loose from the chariot of Neptune; they are still white with foam; and when the sea roars and darkens, when the ships break their cables, the stallions of the Camargue neigh with joy.