an epic poem, in which a visit to the lower regions is a necessity.  The entire episode is impossible and uninteresting, and is a blot in the beautiful idyll.  Later on, this desire to insert the supernatural leads the poet to interrupt the action of his poem, while the three Maries relate to the unconscious Mireio at great length the story of their coming from Jerusalem to Provence.  Interesting as folklore, or as an evidence of the credulity of the Provencals, this narrative of the three Maries is out of place in the poem.  It does not help us out to suppose that Mireio dreams the narrative, for it is full of theology, history, and traditions she could not possibly have conceived.  The poem of Mireio and all Mistral’s work suffer from this desire to work into his poetry all the history, real and legendary, of his region.

The three Maries are Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James and John, and Mary, the mother of James the Less.  After the Crucifixion they embark with Saint Trophime, and successfully battling with the storms of the sea, they land finally in Provence, and by a series of miracles convert the people of Arles.  This canto never would have converted Boileau from his disapproval of the “merveilleux chretien.”

The poet finds his true inspiration again in the life of the Mas, in the home-bringing of the crops, in the gathering of the workers about the table of Meste Ramoun.  This picture of patriarchal life is like a bit out of an ancient literature; we have a feeling of the archaic, of the primitive, we are amid the first elements of human life, where none of the complications of the modern man find a place.  Meste Ambroi, whom Vincen has finally persuaded with passionate entreaties to seek the hand of Mireio for him, comes upon this evening scene.  The interview of the two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from their lips.  Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority:  “A father is a father, his will must be done.  The herd that leads the herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of the wolf.  If a son resisted his father in our day, the father would have slain him perhaps!  Therefore the families were strong, united, sound, resisting the storm like a line of plane trees!  Doubtless they had their quarrels, as we know, but when Christmas night, beneath its starry tent, brought together the head of the house and his descendants, before the blessed table, before the table where he presided, the old man, with his wrinkled hand, washed it all away with his benediction!”