Aside from his rare journeys to Paris, a visit to Switzerland, and another to Italy, Mistral has rarely gone beyond the borders of his beloved region.  He is still living quietly in the little village of Maillane, in a simple but beautiful home, surrounded with works of art inspired by the Felibrean movement.  He has survived many of his distinguished friends.  Roumanille, Mathieu, Aubanel, Daudet, and Paul Arene have all passed away; a new generation is about him.  But his activity knows no rest.  The Felibrean festivities continue, the numerous publications in the Provencal tongue still have in him a constant contributor.  In 1899 the Museon Arlaten (the Museum of Aries) was inaugurated, and is another proof of the constant energy and enthusiasm of the poet.  He is to-day the greatest man in the south of France, universally beloved and revered.

His life after all has been less a literary life than one of direct and unceasing personal action upon the population about him.  The resurrection of the language, the publication of poems, magazines, and newspapers, are only part of a programme tending to raise the people of the south to a conception of their individuality as a race.  He has striven untiringly to communicate to them his own glowing enthusiasm for the past glories of Provence, to fire them with his dream of a great rebirth of the Latin races, to lay the foundation of a great ideal Latin union.  Wonderful is his optimism.  Some of the Felibres about him are somewhat discouraged, many of them have never set their aspirations as high as he has done, and some look upon his dreams as Utopian.  Whatever be the future of the movement he has founded, Mistral’s life in its simple oneness, and in its astonishing success, is indeed most remarkable.  Provence, the land that first gave the world a literature after the decay of the classic tongues, has awakened again under his magic touch to an active mental life.  A second literature is in active being on the soil of France, a second literary language is there a reality.  Whether permanent or evanescent, this glorification of poetry, this ardent love of the beautiful and the ideal, is a noble and inspiring spectacle amid the turmoil and strife of this age of material progress.

[Footnote 1:  The word mas, which is kin with the English manse and mansion, signifies the home in the country with numerous outbuildings grouped closely about it.]

CHAPTER II

THE FELIBRIGE

The history of the Felibrige, from its beginning, in 1854, down to the year 1896, has been admirably written by G. Jourdanne.[2] The work is quite exhaustive, containing, in addition to the excellently written narrative, an engraving of the famous cup, portraits of all the most noted Felibres, a series of elaborately written notes that discuss or set forth many questions relating to the general theme, a very large bibliography