blow - is sure in time to hold among French writers a commanding place. But even now, in his own southern country, his position is secure. Since August, 1891, in succession to Roumanille, who succeeded Mistral, he has been the Capoulié, the official head of the Félibrige. In his election to this office he received the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a poet by his brother poets of the South of France.

IN THE BAD OLD TIMES.

(From "The Reds of the Midi.”)

THAT evening the party was complete. I, in my corner on the little bench with the cat, said not a word; but I thought to myself: "If only some one would ask old Pascal to tell a story! Yesterday he finished telling us the battle of Mont Saint-Jean; to-day, perhaps, he will tell us nothing."

Just then Lou Materoun, as he pressed with his thumb into his clay pipe a piece of amadou that smelt sweet as it burned, said: "I've always wanted to ask you, Pascal, how it was that you, a peasant from Malemort, happened to be in the Battalion from Marseilles that went up to Paris the year of the Revolution? That always has puzzled me."

"It was poverty, young fellow," old Pascal answered in his rich, clear voice; "it was just poverty. But if you have the patience to listen I'll tell you about it from first to last."

We knew then that a story was coming; and so we all settled ourselves comfortably to listen, and old Pascal began:

Why are people always grunting nowadays? They actually grunt because of over-plenty! Nowadays each peasant has his own corner of earth. He who has earth has bread, and he who has bread has blood. I, who am speaking to you, was twelve years old before ever I had seen either kneading-trough, breadhutch, oil-jar, or wine-keg; things owned nowadays by the poorest peasant in the land. In the one room of my father's hut it was more a hut than a cottage were two cradle-like boxes filled with oat-straw in which we slept, the cooking-pot in the middle of the room hanging from a roof-beam, and a big chopping-block-and that was all! That was just all!

We were lodged in this hut, which stood a little above the village of Malemort and close to the Château de la Garde, because we belonged, with the other farm animals, to the estate of La Garde, owned by the Marquis d'Ambrun. My father gathered the acorns from the oaks of the Marquis, and was allowed to

keep the half of them for his pay; and we also had the right to till two scraps of land, from which we got enough beans and vetches and herbs to keep us from actually starving to deathwe three and all our fleas. You will know how we lived when I tell you that not until I got away from La Garde altogether did I taste anything as good as a bit of fresh-baked soft bread dipped in soup made of rancid pork.

My people baked bread but once a year. When the day for making it came, my father and mother went down to the village, and there, husks and all, kneaded the coarse flour made of the rye and beans and acorns we had managed to collect in the course of the year. It was on the very block that you can see in front of our stable, the one on which I cut fodder for the mule, that each morning my father with his big axe chopped up our food for the day. By the end of the year the bread was so hard that it nicked the edge of the axe.

The first bit of white bread that ever I tasted was given me one day, as I passed in front of the Château, by Mademoiselle Adeline, who was of the same age as myself. And for giving it to me she got a round scolding from her mother, the Marquise.

"Adeline, Adeline!" cried the Marquise," why do you give your white bread to that little wretch? You must not teach him what white bread is, or the day may come when he will snatch it out of your mouth!" and then turning to me she went on "Get out of here, little beast! Get out! Hurryor I will set the dogs on you!" And I, gripping fast my bit of bread, scampered off to our hut as fast as I could go. That piece of bread was the most delicious thing I have eaten in all my life. And yet the cruel words of the Marquise made it bitter with a drop of gall.

Another time I was worse served. I was coming home from a hunt for some magpies' nests that I knew of in the poplars in the valley of the Nesque. It was ten o'clock; and, as I had eaten nothing that day, hunger was twisting my empty insides. As I passed behind the Château, skirting the stables and sheepfolds, I saw in the gutter a fine cabbage-stalk. My mouth watered and I ran to pick it up; but the Marquis's sow with her litter also saw it at the same time, and ran as quick as I did. The swine-herd, a cruel fellow, when he saw me stretch out my arm, gave me such a whack with his stick that it took away my breath. I left the cabbage-stalk to the pigs and ran as hard as I could run, for the brute would have beaten me to a jelly; and as I

made off I heard the Marquis calling from his window: "Well done! Well done! What is that little rascal doing there? Does he want to take the food out of the mouths of my pigs? Vermin that they are, those peasants! If they could but get at us, they would eat us up alive!"

That day another great drop of bitterness fell into my heart.

So, too, when Monsieur le Marquis, Madame le Marquise, and Monsieur Robert, their son, who was Cavalier du Roy,chanced one day to pass before our hut, and I saw my old father and my old mother kneel down on the threshold, just as if the Host were going by, shame devoured me; and it seemed as if a red-hot iron were pressing into the pit of my stomach, it hurt me so to keep back my rage.

"You wretched boy," called out my father as he rose from his knees, "the next time I'll take good care that you kneel to our kind master!" and to know how good and how simple my father was made the fire, not of God, burn the more fiercely within me.

The only one of those living in the Château whom I could look upon with pleasure and salute with respect was little Adeline, the young lady who gave me the piece of white bread. She had gentle eyes, and smiled at me each time that we chanced to meet. But as she grew up it seemed to me that little by little her smiles grew fainter. Her eyes, I know, were just as gentle, only I dared not look at her any more.

One November evening during All Saint's week, while we were in our hut around a pot of dried beans, the last left from our store for the year, my father said: "To-morrow, son, we must begin to gather our acorns in the Nesque for the winter. Times are going to be hard with us. I don't know all that is taking place, but I have been told that in Avignon people are killing each other off like flies; and there is the Revolution in Paris, and Monsieur le Marquis and all the family are going to help the King of France, who is in great danger."

This was the first time I had heard of the King of France, but instantly the thought came to me: "If I could only fight him, this King of France whom the Marquis is going to defend!" How old was I then? I don't know. I never knew exactly the records of baptism, you see, were burned; but I must have been thirteen, perhaps fourteen years old. Certainly my father's words astonished me, but as much, perhaps, by their number as by what he told. He always had a short tongue, poor man.

VOL. X.-17

The next morning I had forgotten all about the King of France when, before daybreak, we started to gather our harvest of acorns. It was fearful weather. The ground was frozen two spans deep; a cutting wind was blowing; from time to time snow-squalls burst out of the sullen sky. The dawn was just breaking when we reached the ravine of the Nesque, bordered by great oaks, through which the wind blew sharply and tossed hither and thither their leaves, that looked as if they had been turned into red copper by the cold. Excepting the red-oak leaves, everything on the earth and above it was gray. The sky was one mass of even, gray cloud, stretching from east to west just like a piece of gray felt. Flocks of linnets, red-breasts, yellow-hammers, and other little birds came down from the mountains, flying close to the ground, or, with feathers all fluffed up, huddling together in the stubble or bushes. When the poor little things act that way, it always is bitter cold.

Let any one try to gather acorns in cold weather with numb hands! Among the pebbles in the dry bed of the river the shining acorns, no bigger than olives, so slide and slip through your fingers that it takes a whole big half-day to gather two pecks of them. My poor father, I can see him now! As he crouched down and leaned forward he left between his skimpy greenish stuff-jacket and his buckled breeches a great gap, where the sharp edge of his lean spine showed plainly through his coarse worn-out shirt; and his rough woollen stockings were full of holes, and so worn off at the heels that his feet were naked in his wooden shoes stuffed with dry grass.

The furious cold wind, which whipped about and whirled the copper-red leaves, whistled in the osiers; and in the hollows of the rocks it howled and roared like some great fearful horn. I hugged myself close, my skin all cracked with the cold, and thought of the good time to come when, sheltered behind a rock, we could eat, with our hunger for a sauce, the hard nubbin of black bread which my father that morning had chopped off for us on the block with the big axe.

We were working hard in silence for the very poor never have much to say when all of a sudden I heard the hounds of the Marquis in full cry. They were at the other end of the ravine, on the slope of the mountain. I jumped up and stared with all my might. When one is young there is nothing so delightful as to see a hare chased by a pack of dogs. I saw them a long, long way off: the hare, light as smoke, was far

ahead. From time to time she would squat on her haunches, listening, and then would be off again; and at last I saw her run down toward the dry bed of the stream. The hounds, in full cry, came tearing after her. When they overran the scent, they quickly tried back and found it again. Where the hare had stopped to listen, they snuffed around and yelped the louder. The pack was spread all across the slope. In front were the large black-and-tan hounds, their ears a span long, who easily overleapt bushes and openings in the ground. Then came the smaller and heavier dogs, slower but surer. Then, away behind the rest, the beagles with their short, sharp cry— good beasts for taking the hare in her form, but slow-going, because their little twisted legs are no good for jumping, and they have to go round even the bunches of wild thyme.

I held my breath, for the hare was almost on us and was going to pass right in front of me. But just as I picked up a stone-sbisto! she saw me! She doubled like a flash, with one spring she was over the Nesque, and with another she was up the mountain-side and safe in the woods- so good-bye to my hare! The dogs came on quickly, overrunning the scent at the point where she had doubled, but picking it up again in no time. And then the whole pack in full cry swept on down the hillside until they were lost in the forest far off among the ravines, and only their cry came ringing back to us faintly from the distance.

My father had not noticed any part of all this. Without even lifting his head he had kept on gathering the acorns with his stiff fingers. As I still stood there, open-mouthed, all of a sudden on the slope of the mountain behind me I heard a noise of rolling stones. I turned and saw Monsieur Robert, the Cavalier du Roy, running down toward us, holding in one hand his dog-whip and in the other his gun. He rushed down on us like a wounded wild boar-it is the only thing I can think of as savage as he was then! My poor father at once dropped down on his knees to him, as was the peasant habit of those times; but the brute, without a word, gave him such a blow across the face with his dog-whip that he knocked him to the ground. Seeing this, I ran to the side of the ravine and, kicking off my sabots, began to climb up the rocks, clinging with my hands and with my feet too. I heard every blow that lashed my poor father, and I heard the brute calling out to him: "Dirty beast of a peasant! I'll teach you to spoil my hunting!" and then more blows.