and a very wise and practical old lady she is; he treats as “joyeusetes” the conversation of the Venetian women who inform the Prince that in their city the noblewoman, once married, may have quite a number of lovers without exciting any comment, the husband being rather relieved than otherwise; he allows his boatmen to swear and call one another vile names, and a howling, brawling lot they frequently become; and when at last we get to the fair at Beaucaire, there are pages of minute enumerations that can scarcely be called Homeric.  In short, a very large part of the book is prose, animated, vigorous, often exaggerated, but prose.  Like his other long poems it is singularly objective.  Rarely does the author interrupt his narrative or description to give an opinion, to speak in his own name, or to analyze the situation he has created.  Like the other poems, too, it is sprinkled with tales and legends of all sorts, some of them charming.  Superstitions abound.  Mistral shares the fondness of the Avignonnais for the number seven.  Apian has seven boats, the Drac keeps his victim seven years, the woman of Condrieu has seven sons.

The poem offers the same beauties as the others, an astonishing power of description first of all.  Mistral is always masterly, always poetic in depicting the landscape and the life that moves thereon, and especially in evoking the life of the past.  He revives for us the princesses and queens, the knights and troubadours, and they move before us, a fascinating, glittering pageant.  The perfume of flowers, the sunlight on the water, the great birds flying in the air, the silent drifting of the boats in the broad valley, the reflection of the tall poplars in the water, the old ruins that crown the hilltops—­all these things are exquisitely woven into the verse, and more than a mere word-painting they create a mood in the reader in unison with the mood of the person of whom he is reading.

In touching truly deep and serious things Mistral is often superficial, and passes them off with a commonplace.  An instance in this poem is the episode of the convicts on their way to the galleys at Toulon.  No terrible indignation, no heartfelt pity, is expressed.  Apian silences one of his crew who attempts to mock at the unhappy wretches.  “They are miserable enough without an insult! and do not seem to recognize them, for, branded on the shoulder, they seek the shade.  Let this be an example to you all.  They are going to eat beans at Toulon, poor fellows!  All sorts of men are there,—­churchmen, rascals, nobles, notaries, even some who are innocent!”

And the poet concludes, “Thus the world, thus the agitation, the stir of life, good, evil, pleasure, pain, pass along swiftly, confusedly, between day and night, on the river of time, rolling along and fleeing.”