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Read Ebook: Memoirs of Mistral by Mistral Fr D Ric Maud Constance Elizabeth Translator Strettell Alma Translator
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Ebook has 1511 lines and 74804 words, and 31 pages
This accomplished, he would turn to my mother:
"And your young one, Dela?de--do you not teach him to recite something?"
"Yes," replied my mother simply; "he can say the little rhyme of 'Jean du Porc.'"
"Come, little one, recite 'Jean du Porc,'" cried every one to me.
Then with a bow to the company I would timidly falter:
Quau es mort?--Jan d?u Porc. Quau lou plouro?--Lou rei Mouro. Quau lou ris?--La perdris. Quau lou canto?--La calandro. Quau i? viro ? brand?--Lou qui?u de la sartan. Quau n'en porto d?u?--Lou qui?u d?u peir?u.
It was with these nursery rhymes, songs, and tales that our parents in those days taught us the good Proven?al tongue. But at present, vanity having got the upper hand in most families, it is with the system of the worthy Monsieur Dumas that children are taught, and little nincompoops are turned out who have no more attachment or root in their country than foundlings, for it's the fashion of to-day to abjure all that belongs to tradition.
It is now time that I said a little of my maternal grandfather, the worthy goodman ?tienne. He was, like my father, yeoman farmer, of an old family and a good stock, but with this difference, that whereas the Mistrals were workers, economists and amassers of wealth, who in all the country had not their like, the Poulinets were careless and happy-go-lucky, disliked hard work, let the water run and spent their harvests. My grandsire ?tienne was, in short, a veritable Roger Bontemps.
In spite of having eight children, six of whom were girls, directly there was a f?te anywhere, he was off with his boon companions for a three days' spree. His outing lasted as long as his crowns; then, adaptive as a glove, his pockets empty, he returned to the house. Grandmother Nanon, a godly woman, would greet him with reproaches:
"Art thou not ashamed, profligate, to devour the dowries of thy daughters?"
"H?, goodie! What need to worry! Our little girls are pretty, they will marry without dowries. And I fear me, as thou sayest, my good Nanon, we shall have nothing for the last."
Thus teasing and cajolling the good woman, he made the usurers give him mortgages on her dowry, lending him money at the rate of fifty or a hundred per cent., and when his gambling friends came round to visit him at sundown the incorrigible scapegraces would make a carouse in the chimney corner, singing all in unison:
"We are three jolly fellows who haven't a sou."
There were times when my poor grandmother well-nigh despaired at seeing, one by one, the best portions of her inheritance disappear, but he would laugh at her fears:
"Why, goosey, cry about a few acres of land, they are common as blackberries," or:
"That land, why, my dear, its returns did not pay the taxes."
And again: "That waste there? Why it was dry as heather from our neighbours' trees."
He had always a retort equally prompt and light-hearted. Even of the usurers he would say:
"My faith, but it is a happy thing there are such people. Without them, how should we spendthrifts and gamblers find the needful cash at a time when money is merchandise?"
In those days Beaucaire with its famous fair was the great point of attraction on the Rh?ne. People of all nations, even Turks and negroes, journeyed there both by land and water. Everything made by the hand of man, whether to feed, to clothe, to house, to amuse or to ensnare, from the grindstones of the mill, bales of cloth or canvas, rings and ornaments made of coloured glass, all were to be found in profusion at Beaucaire, piled up in the great vaulted storehouses, the market-halls, the merchant vessels in the harbour or the booths in the meadows. It was a universal exhibition held yearly in the month of July of all the industries of the south.
Punch and Judy possessed perennial joys for him. Open-mouthed he stood among the crowd, laughing like a boy at the old jokes, and experiencing an unholy joy as the blows were showered on the puppets representing law and order.
This was always the chance for the watchful pickpocket to quietly abstract one by one his handkerchiefs, a thing foreseen by my grandsire, who, on discovering the loss, invariably, without more ado, unwound his belt and used the new ones, with the result that on returning home he presented himself to his family with a nose dyed blue from the unwashed cotton.
"So I see," cries my grandmother, "they have stolen your handkerchiefs again."
"Who told you that?" asks her good man in surprise.
"Your blue nose," answers she.
"Well, that Punch and Judy show was worth it," maintains the incorrigible grandsire.
When his daughters, of whom, as I have said, my mother was one, were of an age to marry, being neither awkward nor disagreeable, in spite of their lack of dowry, suitors appeared on the scene. But when the fathers of these youths inquired of my grandsire how much he was prepared to give to his daughter, Master ?tienne fired up in wrath:
"How much do I give my daughter? Idiot! I give your lad a fine young filly, well trained and handled, and you ask me to add lands and money! Who wants my daughters must take them as they are or leave them. God be thanked, in the breadpan of Master ?tienne there is always a loaf."
It was a fact that each one of the six daughters of my grandfather were married for the sake of their fine eyes only, and made good marriages too.
"A pretty girl," says the proverb, "carries her dowry in her face."
But I must not leave this budding time of my childhood without plucking one more of memory's blooms.
Behind the Judge's Farm where I was born there was a moat, the waters of which supplied our old draw-well. The water, though not deep, was clear and rippling, and on a summer's day the place was to me one of irresistible attraction.
The draw-well moat! It was the book in which, while amusing myself, I learnt my first lessons in natural history. There were fish, both stickleback and young carp, which, as they passed down the stream in shoals, I endeavoured to catch with a small canvas bag that had once served for nails, suspended on a long reed. There were little dragon-flies, green, blue, and black, who, as they alighted on the reeds gently, oh so gently, I seized with my small fingers--that is when they did not escape me, lightly and silently, with a shimmer of their gauzy wings; there also was to be found a kind of brown insect with a white belly which leaped in the water and moved his tiny paws like a cobbler at work. Little frogs too, with dark gold-spotted backs showing among the tufts of moss, and who, on seeing me, nimbly plunged in the stream; and the triton, a sort of aquatic salamander, who wriggled round in a circle; and great horned beetles, those scavengers of the pools, called by us the "eel-killers."
Add to all these a mass of aquatic plants, such as the cats-tail, that long cottony blossom of the typha-plant; and the water-lily, its wide round leaves and white cup magnificently outspread on the water's smooth surface; the gladiole with its clusters of pink flowers and the pale narcissus mirrored in the stream; the duckweed with its minute leaves; the ox-tongue, which flowers like a lustre; and the forget-me-not, myosotis, named in Provence "eyes of the Child Jesus."
But of all this wonder-world, what held my fancy most was the water-iris, a large plant growing at the water's edge in big clumps, with long sword-shaped leaves and beautiful yellow blooms raising high their heads like golden halberds. The golden lilies, which on an azure field form the arms of France and of Provence, were undoubtedly suggested by these same water-iris, for the lily and the iris are really of the same family, and the azure of the coat-of-arms faithfully represents the water by the edge of which the iris grows.
It was a summer's day, about the harvest time. All the people of the farm-house were out at work, helping to bind up the sheaves. Some twenty men, bare-armed, marched by twos and fours, round the horses and mules who were treading hard. Some took off the ears of corn or tossed the straw with their long wooden forks, while others, bare-foot, danced gaily in the sunshine on the fallen grain. High in the air, upheld by the three supports of a rustic crane, the winnowing cradle was suspended. A group of women and girls with baskets threw the corn and husks into the net of the sieve, and the master, my father, vigorous and erect, swung the sieve towards the wind, turning the bad grains on to the top. When the wind abated or at intervals ceased, my father, with the motionless sieve in his hands, facing the wind and gazing out into the blue, would say in all seriousness, as though addressing a friendly god: "Come, blow, blow, dear wind."
And I have seen the "mistral," on my word, in obedience to the wish of the patriarch, again and again draw breath, thus carrying off the refuse while the blessed fine wheat fell in a white shower on the conical heap visibly rising in the midst of the winnowers.
At sunset, after the grain had been heaped up with shovels, and the men, all powdered with dust, had gone off to wash at the well and draw water for the beasts, my father with great strides
would measure the heap of corn, tracing upon it a cross with the handle of the spade and uttering the words: "God give thee increase."
I must have been scarcely four years old and still wearing petticoats, when one lovely afternoon during this threshing season, after rolling as children love to do in the new straw, I directed my steps towards the draw-well moat.
For some days past the fair water-iris had commenced to open, and my hands tingled to pluck some of the lovely golden buds.
Arrived at the stream, gently I slipped down to the edge of the water and thrust out my hand to grab the flower, but it was too far off; I stretched, and behold me in an instant up to the neck in water.
I cried out. My mother hurried to the rescue, hauled me out, bestowing a slap or two, and drove me like a dripping duck before her to the house.
"Let me catch you again, little good-for-nothing, at that moat!"
"I wanted to pick the water-iris," I pleaded.
"Oh yes, go there again to pick iris! Don't you know, then, little rascal, there is a snake hidden in the grass, a big snake who swallows whole, both birds and children."
She undressed me, taking off my small shoes, socks, and shirt, and while my clothes dried put me on my Sunday sabots and suit, with the warning:
"Take care now to keep yourself clean."
Behold me again out of doors; on the new straw I executed a happy caper, then catching sight of a white butterfly hovering over the stubble, off I went, my blonde curls flying in the wind and--all at once there I was again at the moat!
Oh, my beautiful yellow flowers! They were still there, proudly rising out of the water, showing themselves off in a manner it was impossible to withstand. Very cautiously I descend the bank planting my feet squarely; I thrust out my hand, I lean forward, stretching as far as I can ... and splash ... I am in the water again.
Woe is me! While about me the bubbles gurgled and among the rushes I thought I spied the great snake, a loud voice cried out:
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