are never subdued, and often, after years of exile from the salt meadows
of the Camargue, they throw off their rider, and gallop over twenty
leagues of marshes to the land of their birth, to breathe the free salt
air of the sea. Their element is the sea; they have surely broken loose
from the chariot of Neptune; they are still white with foam; and when
the sea roars and darkens, when the ships break their cables, the
stallions of the Camargue neigh with joy.

And Ramoun welcomes Veran, and hopes that Mirèio will wed him, and calls
his daughter, who gently refuses. The third suitor, Ourrias, has no
better fortune. The account of this man's giant strength, the narrative
of his exploits in subduing the wild bulls, are quite Homeric. The
story is told of the scar he bears, how one of the fiercest bulls that
he had branded carried him along, threw him ahead on the ground, and
then hurled him high into the air. The strong, fierce man presents his
suit, describing the life the women lead in the Camargue; but before he
has her love, "his trident will bear flowers, the hills will melt away
like wax, and the journey to Les Baux will be by sea." This canto and
the next, recounting the fierce combat between Ourrias and Vincèn, are
really splendid narrative poetry. The style is marvellously compressed,
and the story thrilling. The sullen anger of Ourrias, his insult that
does not spare Mirèio, the indignation of Vincèn, that fires him with
unwonted strength, the battle of the two men out alone in the fields
near the mighty Pont du Gard, Vincèn's victory in the trial of strength,
the treachery of Ourrias, who sneaks back and strikes his enemy down
with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full
length upon the grass, and the grass yields, bloody, and over his earthy
limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the
compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable.
The assassin gallops away upon his mare, and seeks by night to cross the