REDS OF THE MIDI, The. The first book written in modern Provencal to be pub lished in English. was Reds of the Midi' ((Les Rouges du Midi,' 1896). In a Prologue, Felix Gras gives a charming picture of his own boyhood and of his juvenile admiration for the Napoleonic veteran Pascal. Then he intro duces us to the little company at the shoe maker's shop where in the evenings old Pascal was wont to tell stories of his campaigns from the Pyramids to Moscow to a little company of whom the boy Felix was not the least eager listener. (The Reds of the Midi' is based in part on what Gras learned from his grand father and from Pascal who is made to tell here of the wanton feudal oppression at which his boyhood revolted, of the perils that beset his youth, of his enlistment at Avignon in the famous Marseilles Battalion, the 516 who gave to France its battle song, and, on the memorable 10 Aug. 1792, led the attack on. the EKing's
Castle," the Tuileries. This rising of a people is shown as the simple, brave, honest soldier boy might have seen it, and with great art is pude to appear wholly objectively from the peasant's point of view. Notable as fiction, the story has, as the author wrote to William E. Gladstone, also the historical purpose to prove . . . that it was the men of the South who were the first to rise up against despotism, and that to them the triumph of the Revolution was due. And to prove also that from them came the first protest against the errors, and the violence and the excesses of the Reign of There are graphic glimpses of the September massacres and of the guillotine. The translation by Catherine A. Janvier is of exceptional merit. The story is continued as to several minor characters in Terror' (1898).