It was at this school, in 1845, that he formed his friendship with
Roumanille, who had come there as a teacher. It is not too much to say
that the revival of the Provençal language grew out of this meeting.
Roumanille had already written his poems, _Li Margarideto_ (The
Daisies). "Scarcely had he shown me," says Mistral, "in their
spring-time freshness, these lovely field-flowers, when a thrill ran
through my being and I exclaimed, 'This is the dawn my soul awaited to
awaken to the light!'" Mistral had read some Provençal, but at that time
the dialect was employed merely in derision; the writers used the speech
itself as the chief comic element in their productions. The poems of
Jasmin were as yet unknown to him. Roumanille was the first in the Rhone
country to sing the poetry of the heart. Master and pupil became firm
friends and worked together for years to raise the home-speech to the
dignity of a literary language.

At seventeen Mistral returned home, and began a poem in four cantos,
that he has never published; though portions of it are among the poems
of _Lis Isclo d'Or_ and in the notes of _Mirèio_. This poem is called
_Li Meissoun_ (Harvest). His family, seeing his intellectual
superiority, sent him to Aix to study law. Here he again met Mathieu,
and they made up for the aridity of the Civil Code by devoting
themselves to poetry in Provençal.

In 1851 the young man returned to the _mas_, a _licencié en droit_, and
his father said to him: "Now, my dear son, I have done my duty; you know
more than ever I learned. Choose your career; I leave you free." And the
poet tells us he threw his lawyer's gown to the winds and gave himself
up to the contemplation of what he so loved,--the splendor of his native
Provence.