Short Stories

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... The Pope's Mule OF all the clever sayings, proverbs, or saws with which our Provence peasants embellish their discourse, I know of none more picturesque or more peculiar than this. Within a radius of fifteen leagues of my mill, when anybody mentions a spiteful, vindictive man, he will say: "Look out for that man! he is like the Pope's mule, that keeps her kick for seven years." I tried for a long time to find out the source of that proverb, what that Papal mule might be, and that kick kept for seven years. No one here was able to give me any information on that subject, not even Francet Mamal, my fife-player, who, however, has the whole legendary history of Provence at his finger-ends. Francet agrees with me that there is probably some old tradition of Provence behind it; but he has never heard it mentioned except in the proverb. "You won't find that anywhere except in the Grasshoppers' Library," said the old fifer, with a laugh. I thought the suggestion a good one, and as the Grasshoppers' Library is right at my door, I shut myself up there for a week. It is a wonderful library, splendidly stocked, open to poets day and night, the attendants being little librarians with cymbals, who play for you all the time. I passed some delightful days there, and after a week of investigation--on my back--I ended by discovering what I wanted to know, that is to say, the story of my mule and of that famous kick stored up for seven years. The tale is a pretty one, although slightly ingenuous, and I am going to try to tell it to you as I read it yesterday morning in a manuscript of the colour of the weather, which had a pleasant smell of dry lavender, with long gossamer-threads for book-marks. He who never saw Avignon in the time of the Popes has seen...