Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/156

130 escarpments of the Valoun d'Infer, and, being struck with the grandeur of its desolation, conceived in its midst the outline of his "Inferno." Every thing leads to this idea, even the name of the gorge itself, its amphitheatrical form, the same given by Dante to Hell, and the large detached rocks forming its escarpments.

And the Provençal name of these same baus, Italianized by the poet into balzo, was given by him to the escarpments of his own lugubrious funnel.

$5$ "Sabatori." Beside its etymological meaning, this word is used to designate a meeting held by sorcerers at night to worship the devil. (The Witches' Sabbath of our own witchcraft delusion.—) -

$6$ "Saint Trophimus'," the cathedral of Arles, built in the seventh century, by Archbishop St. Virgile, in which Frederic Barbarossa was consecrated emperor in 1178.

$7$ Peasants in Southern France have remarked that the last three days of February and the first three of March are almost always visited by a renewal of cold; and this is how their poetic imagination accounts for the fact:—

An old woman was once tending her sheep. It was toward the end of February, which that year had not been severe. The old woman, believing herself clear of winter, began jeering February as follows:—

This jeer enraged February, who went in search of March, and said, "March, do me a favor!"—"Two, if you like," answered March."—"Lend me three days; and, with the three I have left, I will both harm her and cost her plenty." The weather immediately afterward became intolerably bad, all the sheep of the old woman were killed by the frost, and she, the peasants say,