first a very modest attempt to make it serve merely better purposes than
it had done after the eclipse that followed the Albigensian war. For a
long time the linguistic and literary aspect of all this activity was
the only one that attracted any attention in the rest of France or in
Provence itself. Not that the Provençal language had ever quite died out
even as a written language. Since the days of the Troubadours there had
been a continuous succession of writers in the various dialects of
southern France, but very few of them were men of power and talent.
Among the immediate predecessors of the Félibres must be mentioned
Saboly, whose _Noëls_, or Christmas songs, are to-day known all over the
region, and Jasmin, who, however, wrote in a different dialect. Jasmin's
fame extended far beyond the limited audience for which he wrote; his
work came to the attention of the cultured through the enthusiastic
praise of Sainte-Beuve, and he is to-day very widely known. The
English-speaking world became acquainted with him chiefly through the
translations of Longfellow. Jasmin, however, looked upon himself as the
last of a line, and when, in his later years, he heard of the growing
fame of the new poets of the Rhone country, it is said he looked upon
them with disfavor, if not jealousy. Strange to say, he was, in the
early days, unknown to those whose works, like his, have now attained
well-nigh world-wide celebrity.

The man who must justly be looked upon as the father of the present
movement was Joseph Roumanille. He was born in 1818, in the little town
of Saint-Rémy, a quaint old place, proud of some remarkable Roman
remains, situated to the south of Avignon. Roumanille was far from
foreseeing the consequences of the impulse he had given in arousing
interest in the old dialect, and, until he beheld the astonishing
successes of Mistral, strongly disapproved the ambitions of a number of
his fellow-poets to seek an audience for their productions outside of