Until 1876 these questions slept. Mistral is a Catholic, but has managed
to hold more or less aloof from political matters. Aubanel was a zealous
Catholic, and had the title by inheritance of Printer to his Holiness.
Roumanille was a Catholic, and an ardent Royalist. When the Félibrige
came to extend its limits over into Languedoc, the poet Auguste Fourès
and his fellows proclaimed a different doctrine, and called up memories
of the past with a different view. They affirmed their adherence to the
_Renaissance méridionale_, and claimed equal rights for the Languedocian
dialect. They asserted, however, that the true tradition was republican,
and protested vigorously against the clerical and monarchical parties,
which, in their opinion, had always been for Languedoc a cause of
disaster, servitude, and misery. The memory of the terrible crusade in
the thirteenth century inspired fiery poems among them. Hatred of Simon
de Montfort and of the invaders who followed him, free-thought, and
federalism found vigorous expression in all their productions. In
Provence, too, there have been opinions differing widely from those of
the original founders, and the third Capoulié, Félix Gras, was a
Protestant. Of him M. Jourdanne writes:--

"Finally, in 1891, after the death of Roumanille, the highest office in
the Félibrige was taken by a man who could rally about him the two
elements that we have seen manifested, sufficiently Republican to
satisfy the most ardent in the extreme Left, sufficiently steady not to
alarm the Royalists, a great enough poet to deserve without any dispute
the first place in an assembly of poets."

He, like Mistral, wrote epics in twelve cantos. His first work, _Li
Carbounié_, has on its title-page three remarkable lines:--

"I love my village more than thy village,