Memoirs of Mistral

Alphonse Daudet, writing of his youth in the “Lettres de mon Moulin” and “Trente Ans de Paris,” has told with the finest bloom of his pen some of the pranks he played with the e...

The _Provençal Almanac_, welcomed by the country-people, delighted in by the patriots, highly favoured by the learned and eagerly looked forward to by the artistic, rapidly gain...

After that experience, my parents had to find me another school, not too distant from Maillane, nor of too exalted a condition, for we country people were not proud. So they pla...

As far back as I can remember I see before me, towards the south, a barrier of mountains, whose slopes, rocks and gorges stand out in the distance with more or less clearness ac...

I had now become a full-blown lawyer, like scores of others, and, as you may have remarked, I did not overwork myself! Proud as a young bird that has found a worm, I returned ho...

When my parents found that my whole heart was set upon play and that nothing could keep me from idling away the livelong day in the fields with the village boys, they came to th...

“A little of everything. I have been helper at the oil mills, muleteer, carrier, labourer, miller, shearer, mower if necessary, wrestler on occasions, pruner of poplars, a high-...

That year, my parents, seeing me gaping idly at the moon, sent me to Aix to study law, for these good souls were wise enough to know that my bachelor’s degree was but an insuffi...

The winter of 1847-1848 began happily enough. The people settled down quietly again to their business of making a tolerably good harvest, and the hateful subject of politics was...

The following year (1856), at the time of the fête of Sainte-Agathe, patroness of Maillane, I received a visit from a well-known poet in Paris. Fate, or rather the good star of...

Like the cats who continually move their young ones from place to place, at the opening of the next school year my mother took me off to Monsieur Dupuy, a native of Carpentras,...

At eight years old I was sent to school with a little blue satchel to carry my books and my lunch. Not before, thank God, for in all that touched my inner development and the ed...

All my life I had heard of the Camargue and of Les Saintes-Maries and the pilgrimage to their shrine, but I had never as yet been there. In the spring of the year 1855 I wrote t...

The eve of the Feast of Epiphany it was the custom for all the children of our countryside to go forth to meet the three kings, the wise men from the East, who with their camels...

We were a set of youthful spirits at that time in Provence, all closely banded together with the object of a literary revival for our national tongue. We went at it heart and soul.

“I have finished, so far,” I replied, “only ... I will now have to go to Nîmes and take my bachelor’s degree--a step which gives me a certain amount of apprehension.”

When occasionally a townsman visited our farm, one of those who affected to speak only French, it puzzled me sorely and even disconcerted me to see my parents all at once take o...