e is cruelly trifling with him. She reassures
him, passionately. "Do not speak so," cries the boy, "from me to you
there is a labyrinth; you are the queen of the Mas, all bow before you;
I, peasant of Valabregue, am nothing, Mireio, but a worker in the
fields!" "Ah, what is it to me whether my beloved be a baron or a
basket-weaver, provided he is pleasing to me. Why, O Vincen, in your
rags do you appear to me so handsome?"

And then the young man is as inspired, and in impassioned, well-nigh
extravagant language tells of his love for Mireio. He is like a fig tree
he once saw that grew thin and miserable out of a rock near Vaucluse,
and once a year the water comes and the tree quenches its thirst, and
renews its life for a year. And the youth is the fig tree and Mireio the
fountain. "And would to Heaven, would to Heaven, that I, poor boy, that
I might once a year, as now, upon my knees, sun myself in the beams of
thy countenance, and graze thy fingers with a trembling kiss." And then
her mother calls. Mireio runs to the house, while he stands motionless
as in a dream.

No resume or even translation can give the beauty of this canto, its
brightness, its music, its vivacity, the perfect harmony between words
and sense, the graceful succession of the rhymes and the cadence of the
stanzas. Elsewhere in the chapter on versification a reference is made
to the mechanical difficulties of translation, but there are
difficulties of a deeper order. The Felibres put forth great claims for
the richness of their vocabulary, and they undoubtedly exaggerate. Yet,
how shall we render into English or French the word _embessouna_ when
describing the fall of Mireio and Vincen from the tree. Mistral
writes:--

"Toumbon, embessouna, sus lou souple margai."

_Bessoun_ (in French, _besson_) means a twin, and the participle
expresses the idea, _clasped together like twins_. (Mistral translates,
"serres comme deux jumeaux.") An expression of this sort, of course,
adds little to the prose language; but this power, untrammelled by
academic traditions, of creating a word for the moment, is essential to
the freshness of poetic style.

What is to be praised above all in these two exquisite cantos is the
pervading naturalness. The similes and metaphors, however bold and
original, are always drawn from the life of the speakers. Meste Ambroi,
declining at first to sing, says "_Li mirau soun creba!_" (The mirrors
are broken), referring to the me