ncal verses of his own making. From that moment, though
there was a dozen years' difference between their ages, Mistral and
Roumanille began a friendship which was to last till Roumanille's death,
a friendship of half a century.

Soon their dream attracted other recruits, and presently seven friends,
whose names are all famous now, and most of whom have statues in Arles
or in Avignon--Roumanille, Mistral, Aubanel, Mathieu, Giera, Brunet, and
Tavan--after the manner of Ronsard's "Pleiade," and Rossetti's
"P.R.B."--formed themselves into a brotherhood to carry on the great
work of regeneration.

They needed a name to call themselves by. They had all met together to
talk things over in the old castle of Font-Segugne, or, as Mistral more
picturesquely puts it: "It was written in heaven that one blossoming
Sunday, the twenty-first of May, 1854, in the full springtide of life
and of the year, seven poets should come to meet together in the castle
of Font-Segugne." Several suggestions were made for a name for this
brotherhood, but presently Mistral announced that in an old folk-story
he had collected at his birthplace, Maillane, he believed that he had
found the word they were in search of. In this folk-story the boy Christ
is represented as discoursing in the temple with "the seven felibres of
the Law."

"Why, that is us!" exclaimed the enthusiastic young men as Mistral
finished, and there on the spot "felibre" was adopted as the password of
their order, Mistral coining the word "felibrige" to represent the work
they aimed to do, and also their association. The name stuck, and has
now for many years been the banner-word for the vigorous school of
Provencal literature and the allied arts of painting and sculpture which
has responded with such eager vitality to Mistral's rallying cry.

But, excellent as are the other poets which the school has produced--and
one need only glance through a recent _Anthologie du Felibrige_ to
realize what a wealth of true poetry the word "felibrige" now stands
for--there can be no question that its greatest asset still remains
Mistral's own work, as it was his first great poem, _Mireio_, which
first drew the eyes of literary Paris, more than inclined to be
contemptuous, to the Provencal renaissance.

Adolphe Dumas had been sent to Provence in the year 1856 by the Minister
of Public Instruction to collect the folk-songs of the people, and
calling on Mistral (then twenty-six), living quietly wi