“Frolic! What a pretty word! What does it mean, Mother?” “It means playing without running out of breath… for the fun of it, like how you were playing earlier in the irises and the periwinkle. Today I frolic, yesterday I frolicked, I have frolicked before, water frolics, the air frolics above the cypress, and the soap suds which flow off the board and trace a lovely milky way in the middle of the stream! I plunge my hand in the water, frolic with bubbles, and the stream becomes an iridescent rainbow, frollicking with the rushes…

Marie Gasquet (1872-1960)
Novelist, Reine du Félibrige

“Here we are at the edge of a field of hyacinths that are beginning to bloom. – “Go and ask for a few. You’ll say it’s to give to Mme Mistral.” I turn a deaf ear. – “Why don’t you go?” – “Why? Why?” I ask dreamily. “Well, because…” And I rush off. My parents had the good sense not to insist, and I continued to trot away from them, abandoned to one of the most delicate impressions of my childish soul. I’d never confided it to anyone, it was my secret. That secret was that Mme Mistral’s voice, pronouncing the r’s as if she had a dove in her throat, gave me a foretaste of what the music of angels could be. Hearing her talk about “grrrandes marrrguerites” – large daisies – was a kind of incantation, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I asked Mme Mistral to name the flowers I’m going to give her: iris, narcissus, marguerites, I would have a whole melody all to myself. You can imagine that I wouldn’t sacrifice such a rare pleasure just to offer pansies, blue-bells, or hyacinths – flowers with no r, whose names Mme Mistral is sure to pronounce like everyone else. At the time of Mistral’s marriage, when the poet, already at the height of his fame, triumphantly brought his young wife to Provence, she was nineteen, and I was four. – “You have the voice of a soloist,” I told her in wonder at this musical revelation. Exquisite to look at, this fine amber-haired Burgundundian was even more exquisite to hear, and it was through her grace that I learned what the most ordinary geranium or no less ordinary rosemary can become, when lucky enough to be spoken by her.”

Marie Gasquet (1872-1960)
Novelist, Reine du Félibrige