the water in the mysterious
moonlight, causes her to fancy she sees the Drac in the form of a fair
youth smiling upon her, offering her a wild flower, uttering sweet,
mysterious words of love that die away in the water. She often came
again to meet him; and she noticed that if ever she crossed herself on
entering the water, as she had always done when a little girl, the Drac
would not appear. These three or four pages mark the genuine poet and
the master of language. The mysterious night, oppressively warm, the
moonlight shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken
only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a
nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic
beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping
at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little
eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty
in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, kissed by
the moonbeams:--

"alusentido
Per li rai de la luno que beisavon
Soun fin coutet, sa jouino car ambrenco,
Si bras poupin, sis esquino rabloto
E si pousseto armouniouso e fermo
Que s'amagavon coume dos tourtouro
Dins l'esparpai de sa cabeladuro."

The last three lines fall like a caress upon the ear. Mistral often
attains a perfect melody of words with the harmonious succession of
varied vowel sounds and the well-marked cadence of his verse.

When Apian's fleet comes down the river and passes the spot where the
little maid seeks for gold, the men see her and invite her on board. She
will go down to Beaucaire to sell her findings. Jean Roche offers
himself in marriage, but she will have none of him; she loves the vision
seen beneath the waves. When the Anglore spies the blond-haired Prince,
she turns pale and nearly swoons. "'Tis he, 'tis he!" she cries, and she
stands fascinated. William, charmed with the little maid, says to her,
"I recognize thee, O Rhone flower, blooming on the water--flower of good
omen that I saw in a dream." The little maid calls him Drac, identifies
the flower in his hand, and lives on in this hallucination. The boatmen
consider that she has lost her reason, and say she must have drunk of
the fountain of Tourne. The little maid hears them, and bids them speak
low, for their fate is written at the fountain of Tourne; and like a
Sibyl, raising her bare arm, sh