It is difficult to characterize the curious combination of levity and
seriousness that runs through this tale. There is no illusion of reality
anywhere; there is no agony of soul in Baron Pon's confession; Nerto's
terror when she learns that she is the property of the Devil is far from
impressive, because she says too much, with expressions that are too
pretty, perhaps because the rippling octosyllabic verse, in Provençal at
least, cannot be serious; it is hardly worth while to mention the
objection that if the Devil can be worsted at any time merely by
inverting a sword, especially when the sword is that of an assassin and
a rake, whose repentance is scarcely touched upon and is by no means
disinterested, it is clear that the Demon has wasted his time at a very
foolish game; a religious mind might feel a deeper sort of reverence for
the Archangels than is evinced here. Yet it cannot be said that the poem
parodies things sacred and sublime, and it appears to be utterly without
philosophical intention. Mistral really has to a surprising degree the
naïveté of writers of former centuries, and as regards the tale itself
and its general treatment it could almost have been written by a
contemporary of the events it relates.


IV. LOU POUÈMO DÓU ROSE

The _Poem of the Rhone_, the third of the poems in twelve cantos that
Mistral has written, appeared in 1897. It completes the symmetry of his
life work; the former epics extolled the life of the fields, the
mountains, and the sea, the last glorifies the beautiful river that
brings life to his native soil. More than either of the other long
poems, it is an act of affection for the past, for the Rhone of the poem
is the Rhone of his early childhood, before the steam-packets churned