s Tarascon--and we entered it, as was
proper, with the "Master's" words on our lips: "Maillane is beautiful,
well-pleasing is Maillane; and it grows more and more beautiful every
day. Maillane is the honour of the countryside, and takes its name from
the month of May.

"Who would be in Paris or in Rome? Poor conscripts! There is nothing to
charm one there; but Maillane has its equal nowhere--and one would
rather eat an apple in Maillane than a partridge in Paris."

It was Sunday afternoon, and the streets were full of young people in
their Sunday finery, the girls wearing the pretty Arlesien caps. At
first sight of us, with our knapsacks, they were prepared to be amused,
and saucy lads called out things in mock English; but when it was
understood that we were seeking the house of the "Master" we inspired
immediate respect, and a dozen eager volunteers put themselves at our
service and accompanied us in a body to where, at the eastern edge of
the village, there stands an unpretentious square stone house of no
great antiquity, surrounded by a garden and half hidden with trees.

We stood silently looking at the house for a few minutes, trying to
realize that there a great poet had gone on living and working, in
single-minded devotion to his art and his people, for full fifty
years--there in that green, out-of-the-way corner of the world. The
idea of a life so rooted in contentment, so continuously happy in the
lifelong prosecution of a task set to itself in boyhood, and so
independent of change, is one not readily grasped by the hurrying
American mind.

Then we pushed open the iron gate and passed into the garden. A paved
walk led up to the front door, but that had an unused look, and, gaining
no response there, we walked through a shrubbery around the side of the
house, and as we turned the corner came on what was evidently the real
entrance, facing a sunny slope of garden where hyacinths and violets
told of the coming of spring. Here we were greeted by some half a dozen
friendly dogs, whose demonstrations brought to the door a neat little,
keen-eyed peasant woman, with an expression in her face that suggested
that she was the real watch dog, on behalf of her master, standing
between him and an intrusive world. As a matter of fact, as we afterward
learned, that is one of her many self-imposed offices, for, having been
in the Mistral household for many years, she has long since been as much
a family friend as a servant