Letters From My Windmill

by Alphonse Daudet

  I took your letter, madame, as an invitation to change my ways. I have been tempted to shade my little tales a touch too darkly, and I promised myself to give you something joyful, wildly joyful, today.

  After all, what have I got to be sad about? Here I am living hundreds of kilometres from the fogs of Paris, on a radiantly beautiful hillside, in the land of the tambourine and Muscat wine. Around my windmill, everything is sunshine and music; I have wind orchestras of wheatears, bands of blue-tits, and choirs of curlews from morning to midday. And the cicadas, and the shepherds playing their fifes, and the dark haired young beauties laughing amongst the vines…. To tell the truth, this is no place for brooding; I'd rather rush rose-coloured poems and basketsful of spicy stories to you ladies.

  And yet—I can't. I am still too near to Paris. Every day, even here amongst my precious pines, it finds me with its ink-stained fingers of misery…. Even as I write, I have just heard the lamentable news of the death of poor Charles Barbara, and my windmill is plunged into grief.

  Farewell, curlews and cicadas! I haven't the heart for jollity right now… For that reason, madam, instead of the pretty little tale which I had promised, you will only have yet another melancholy story today.

  * * * * *

  Once, there was a man with a golden brain; yes, madame, a brain made entirely from gold. At birth, the doctors thought he wouldn't survive long, so heavy was his head and so oversized his skull. However, he did live and he thrived in the sunshine like a lovely olive tree. Except that his huge head went everywhere with him and it was pitiful to see him bumping into all the furniture as he walked about the house….

  All too often, he would fall down. One day, he fell from the top flight of some marble steps and just happened to catch his head on one. His head rang like an ingot. It could have killed him, but when he got up, there was nothing wrong except there was a small wound with two or three traces of congealed gold in his blond locks. That was how his parents learned that their child had a brain of pure gold.

  * * * * *

  It was kept a close secret, and the poor little thing himself suspected nothing. Sometimes he would ask why he wasn't allowed to go outside to play with the other boys in the street.

  "Someone would steal from you, my treasure!" his mother told him…. Then the little lad, being terrified of being robbed, made no complaint as he went back to playing alone and dragging himself sadly from room to room….It wasn't until he was eighteen years old that his parents told him of this monstrous gift from fate. Since they had nurtured him and fed him all his life, they told him that it was about time he paid them back with some of his gold. The child didn't hesitate; he would do it that right then—but how?

  The legend didn't tell him. He pulled out a nut sized piece of gold from his skull and placed it proudly onto his mother's lap…. Then, dazzled by the riches within his head, he became maddened by desire and drunk with power. So, he left the family home, and went out into the world to squander his treasure.

  * * * * *

  By the way he was living his life—royally—and spreading his gold around—lavishly—you would have thought his brain inexhaustible. And yet it did become exhausted—as could be seen by the dullness in his eyes and his pinched cheeks.

  Finally, one morning, after a night of wild debauchery, the wretched boy, alone amongst the debris of the festivities and the dimming chandeliers, became terrified about the enormous hole appearing in his ingot of a brain. It was time to stop. From then on, he was like a new man. The man with the golden brain, went far away to live alone and work with his hands. He became suspicious and timid like a miser, turning his back on temptation, and trying to forget the fatal riches that he no longer wanted…. Unfortunately, a friend, who knew of his secret, had followed him. One night, the poor man was suddenly woken up by an excruciating pain in his head. He jumped up frantically and caught sight of the friend running away in the moonlight with something under his coat…. Another piece of brain had been stolen!…

  * * * * *

  Some time later, the man with the golden brain fell in love, and this time, too, it came out very badly….

  He fell deeply in love with a petite, blond woman, who loved him a lot, too, but who loved fripperies, white feathers, and pretty, gold-tinged, tassels bobbling along the full length of her boots, even more. In the hands of this cute little creature—half bird, half doll—the gold pieces just melted away at her pleasure. She indulged every known whim, and he could never bring himself to say no to her. He even kept back the awful truth about his fortune to the very end, for fear of upsetting her.

  —Are we really rich then? she would ask.

  The poor man could only answer:

  —Oh, yes… very rich!

  And he would smile lovingly at the little blue bird who was unknowingly eating away at his head. Yet, sometimes fear took hold of him, and he had a craving to hang on to what little he'd got, but then the little woman bounded up to him and said:

  —Husband, you are so rich! Buy me something really expensive….

  And so, he brought her something really expensive.

  Things continued like that for two years. Then, one morning, the young wife died, like a bird, no one knew why. Her funeral was paid for in gold, or at least with what was left of it. The widower arranged a lovely burial for his dear, departed wife. Peals of bells, substantial coaches done out in black, with plumed horses, and silver tears in the velvet drapery; nothing was too good for her. After all, what did the gold matter now?…

  He gave some to the church, some to the pallbearers, and some to the everlasting-flower sellers. Oh yes, he spread it around alright, without stopping to count the cost…. By the time he left the cemetery, he had practically nothing left of his wonderful brain, only a few particles on the outside of his skull.

  Then he was seen going out into the streets like someone lost, his hands stretched out in front of him, and stumbling like a drunkard. In the evening, as the shops lit up, he stopped in front of a large window with a well-lit, grand display of material and finery. He stood and glared for a long time at two blue satin bootees trimmed with swan down. "I know someone who will be very pleased with those bootees," he smiled to himself, and, in denial of his young wife's death, went straight in to buy them.

  The shopkeeper, who was in the back, heard a great scream. She rushed out to help and jumped back in fear as she saw a man standing propped up against the counter and staring blankly at her. In one hand he had the blue bootees with swan down trimmings, and in the other was offering her some bloodied, gold scrapings in the end of his nails.

  Such, madam, is the story of the man with the golden brain.

  * * * * *

  Despite it's air of fantasy, this story is true from start to finish…. Throughout the world there are unfortunate people who are condemned to live by their brains, and pay in that finest of gold, blood and sweat and tears, for the least thing in life. It brings them pain every day, and then, once they tire of their suffering….

  THE POET, FREDERIC MISTRAL

  Last Sunday, I thought I had woken up in Montmartre. It was raining, the sky was grey, and the windmill was a miserable place to be. I dreaded staying in on such a cold, rainy day, and I felt the urge to go and cheer myself up in the company of Frédéric Mistral, the great poet who lives a few kilometres from my precious pines, in the small village of Maillane.

  No sooner said than gone; my myrtle walking stick, my book of

  Montaigne, a blanket, and off I went!

  The fields were deserted…. Our beautiful catholic Provence gives the very earth itself a day of rest on Sundays…. The dogs are abandoned in the houses, and the farms are closed…. Here and there, was a carter's wagon with its dripping tarpaulin, an old hooded woman in a mantle like a dead leaf, mules dressed up for a gala, covered in blue and white esparto, red pompoms, and silver bells, jogging along with a cart-load of folks from the farm going to mass. Further on, there was a small boat on the irrigation c
anal with a fisherman casting his net from it….

  There was no possibility of reading as I walked. The rain came down in bucketsful, which the tramontana then obligingly threw in your face…. I walked non-stop and after three hours I reached the small cypress woods which surround the district of Maillane and shelter it from the frightful wind.

  Nothing was stirring in the village streets; everybody was at high mass. As I passed in front of the church, I heard a serpent playing, and I saw candles shining through the stained glass windows. The poet's home is on the far side of the village; it's the last house on the left, on the road to Saint-Remy—it's a small single-storey house with a front garden…. I went in quietly … and saw no one. The dining room door was shut, but I could hear someone walking about and speaking loudly behind it … a voice and a step that I knew only too well….

  I paused in the whitewashed corridor, with my hand on the doorknob, and feeling very emotional. My heart was thumping.—He's in. He's working. Should I wait. Wait till he's finished…. What the hell. It can't be helped. I went in.

  * * * * *

  Well, Parisians, when the Maillane poet came over to show Paris his book, Mireille, and you saw him in your salons; this noble savage, but in town clothes, with a wing collar and top hat, which disturbed him and much as his reputation. Do you think that was Mistral? It wasn't.

  There's only one real Mistral in the world, and that's the one that I surprised last Sunday in his village, with his felt beret, no waistcoat, a jacket, a red Catalonian sash round his waist, and fiery-eyed, with the flush of inspiration in his cheeks. He was superb, with a great smile, as elegant as a Greek shepherd, bestriding the room manfully, hands in pockets, and making poetry on the hoof….

  —Well, well, well! It's you, Daudet? Mistral exclaimed, throwing himself around my neck, delighted that you thought to come!… Especially the day of the Maillane Fête. We've got music from Avignon, bulls, processions, and the farandole; it will be magnificent…. When mother comes back from the mass, we'll have lunch, and then, hey, we shall go to see the pretty girls dancing….

  As he was speaking, I was rather moved as I looked around at the little dining room with light wallpaper, which I hadn't seen for such a long time and where I had spent such happy hours. Nothing had changed. There was still the yellow check sofa, the two wicker armchairs, Venus de Milo and Venus d'Arles on the fireplace, a portrait of the poet by Hébert, a photograph by Etienne Garjat, and his desk in a place close to the window—a small office desk—overloaded with old books and dictionaries. In the middle of the desk I noticed a large, open exercise book…. On it was written the original of his new poem, Calendal, which should be published on Christmas day this year. Frédéric Mistral has worked on this poem for seven years, and it is six months since he wrote the last verse, but he won't release it yet. You see, there is always another stanza to polish and another even more sonorous rhyme to find…. Even if Mistral writes his verses in true Provencal, he works as though everybody will read it and acknowledge his craftsmanship….

  Ah, the brave poet. Montaigne must have had someone like Mistral in mind when he wrote, Think of those, who, when asked what is the point of spending so much time and trouble on a work of art that can only be seen by a few people, replied, "A few is enough. One is enough. None is enough."

  * * * * *

  The very exercise book in which Calendal had been written, was in my hands, and I leafed through it, with great emotion…. At that moment, fifes and tambourines began playing outside the window, and there was my hero, Mistral, rushing to the cupboard, fetching out glasses and bottles, and dragging the table to centre of the room, before opening the door to the musicians and confiding to me:

  —Don't laugh…. They have come to give me a little concert…. I am a

  Municipal Councillor.

  The little room filled up with people. Tambourines were put on chairs, the old banner placed in a corner, and the sweet wine passed round. After several bottles had been downed, to Monsieur Frédéric's health, the fête was seriously discussed, concerning such matters as whether the farandole was as good as last year, and if the bulls had played their part well. Then the musicians moved off to play concerts to other Councillors. Just then, Mistral's mother entered.

  With a flick of her wrists, she laid the table with beautiful, white linen. But only for two. I was familiar with her household routine; I knew that when Mistral had company, his mother wouldn't sit down at the table…. The old dear only knows Provencal and would feel very uneasy trying to talk to French people…. Also, she was needed in the kitchen.

  Goodness! I had a great meal that day—a piece of roast goat, some mountain cheese, jam, figs, and Muscat grapes. Everything washed down with a good Chateauneuf du Pape, which has such a wonderful red colour in the glass….

  After the meal, I fetched the exercise book and put it on the table in front of Mistral.

  —We'd said we'd go out, said the poet, smiling.

  —Oh, no. Calendal! Calendal!

  Mistral resigned himself to his fate and in his sweet musical voice, while beating the rhythm with his hand, he began the first canto:

  Of a maid who fell in love and madly,

  And a tale I told that turned out sadly,

  Now of a child of Cassis,

  If God's will it may be,

  As a poor little boy casts out for anchovy…

  Outside, the vesper bells ring, the fireworks explode in the square, and the fifes play marching up and down the streets with the tambourines. The bulls from the Camargue bellow as they are herded along.

  But I was listening to the story of the little fisherman from Provence, with my elbows on the table cloth, and my eyes filling with tears.

  * * * * *

  Calendal wasn't just a fisherman; love had forged him into an heroic figure…. To win the heart of his beloved—the beautiful Estérelle—he took on Herculean tasks, in fact, those twelve famous labours paled by comparison to his.

  One time, having it in mind to get rich, he invented some ingenious fishing devices to bring all the fish of the sea into port. Then there was this terrible bandit, count Sévéran, who was going to re-launch his evil trade amongst his cut-throats and molls….

  What a tough guy our little Calendal turns out to be! One day, at Sainte-Baume, he came across two gangs of men intent on violently settling their hash on the grave of Master Jacques, a Provencal who did the carpentry in the Temple of Solomon, if you please. Calendal threw himself into the heart of the murderous mayhem, and calmed the men and talked them down….

  These were superhuman efforts!… High up in the rocks of Lure, there was an inaccessible cedar forest, where even lumberjacks wouldn't go. Calendal, though, does go up there, all alone, and sets up camp for thirty days. The sound of his axe burying its head into tree trunks is heard the whole time. The forest screams its protest, but, one by one, the giant old trees fall and roll into the abyss, until, by the time Calendal comes down, there isn't a single cedar left on the mountain….

  At last, in reward for so many exploits, the anchovy fisherman won the love of Estérelle and was made Consul of Cassis by its inhabitants. That's it then, the story of Calendal…. But why all this fuss about Calendal? The star of the poem is Provence itself—the Provence of the sea; the Provence of the mountains—with its history, its ways, its legends, its scenery, indeed a whole people, free and true to themselves, who have found their poetic voice, before they die…. Nowadays, follow the roads, the railways, the telegraph poles, hunt down the language in the schools! Provence will live for ever in Mireille and Calendal.

  * * * * *

  —That's enough poetry! said Mistral closing his notebook. To the fair!

  We went out; the whole village was in the streets, as a great gust of wind cleared the sky, which radiantly lit up the red roofs, still wet with rain. We arrived in time to see the procession on its way back. It took a whole hour to go past. There was an endless line of hooded, white, blue, and gr
ey penitents, sisterhoods of young, veiled girls; and gold flowered, pink banners, great faded, wooden saints carried shoulder high by four men. There was pottery saints coloured like idols with big bouquets in their hands, copes, monstrances, green velvet canopies, crucifixes framed in white silk; and everything waving in the wind, in the candle light and the sunlight, amongst the Psalms, the litanies, with the bells ringing a full peal.

  Once the procession was over and the saints put back into their chapels, we went to see the bulls and then went on the open air games. There were men wrestling, the hop, skip and jump, and games of strangle the cat, and pig in the middle, and all the rest of the fun events of the Provencal fairs…. Night was falling by the time we got back to Maillane.

  A huge bonfire had been lit in the square, in front of the café where Mistral and his friend Zidore were having a party that night… The farandole started up. Paper cut-out lanterns lit up everywhere in the shadows; the young people took their places; and soon, after a trill on the tambourines, a wild, boisterous, round dance started up around the fire. It was a dance that would last all through the night.

  * * * * *

  After supper, and too tired to keep going, we went into Mistral's modest peasant's bedroom, with two double beds. The walls are bare, and the ceiling beams are visible…. Four years ago, after the academy had given the author of Mireille a prize worth three thousand francs, Madame Mistral had an idea:

  —Why don't we wallpaper your bedroom and put a ceiling in? she said to her son.

  —Oh, no! replied Mistral…. That's poet's money that is, and not to be touched.

  And so the bedroom stayed strictly bare; but as long as the poet's money lasted, anyone needy, knocking on Mistral's door, has always found his purse open….

  I had brought the notebook with Calendal into the bedroom to read to myself a passage of it before going to sleep. Mistral chose the episode about the pottery. Here it is, in brief:

  It is during a meal, somewhere or another. A magnificent Moustier's crockery service is brought out and placed onto the table. At the bottom of every plate, there is a Provencal scene, painted in blue on the enamel. The whole history of the land is represented on them. Each plate of this beautiful crockery has its own verse and the love in those descriptions just has to be seen. There are just so many simple but clever little poems, done with all the charm of the rural idylls of Theocritus.