In 
the 1860s, Alphonse Daudet, an aspiring French writer in his mid-20s, moved from Paris to a mill in Provence with the ambition to write full-time. He was at a crossroads. His employer, the noble Duke de Morny--the half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III--had died unexpectedly in 1865, and Daudet, having recently left his mistress (with whom he had lived for a number of years) was at loose ends, and he was not well. Some years earlier, he had contracted syphilis from a lady in the entourage of the Empress Eugenie, and the disease affected his ability to walk. Thus, a move for his health and his career seemed in order. He would live in his mill for just one year, but it made his career.
With a friend, Paul Arene, Daudet composed letters--short stories, really--that were published as a serial--"Chronicles from Provence" --by the journal, L'Événement, in the summer of 1866. Later these lyrical glimpses of rural Provence would be published as "Letters from my Mill;" some of the stories have remained among the most popular in French literature.
The mill pictured here is not actually the one Daudet lived in, but it is visited by his fans anyway.
In one of his first letters, he describes the transhumanance--the ancient practice of moving herds of cattle, goats and sheep to and from pastures in the mountains. We encountered transhumance on the Aubrac plateau as we made our way on the GR65, and I thought it worth sharing observations from 150 years earlier.
"I need to tell you that in Provence, it is the custom, when the hot weather comes, to send animals to pasture in the Alps. Animals and people pass five or six months up there, lodged under the stars, in grass up to their stomachs. Then, at the first chill of autumn, they all come back down to the farms to graze comfortably on little hills, silvery and fragrant with rosemary. So yesterday evening the herds returned. From morning, the farm gate was open, waiting, the sheepfolds were full of fresh straw. From hour to hour, we said to one another, "Now they are at Eyguières, now at Paradou." Then, suddenly, towards evening, a loud cry, "There they are!!" and far off, we could see the herd advancing in a glory of dust. The whole road was full with them...The old rams come first, horns forward, with a fierce air, behind them, the main flock of sheep, the weary ewes with lambs at their side; --the mules with red pompons carrying day-old lambs in baskets that rocked as they walk, then all the dogs sweating, their their tongues hanging out, and two big, rascally shepherds draped in capes of coarse red wool that fell right to their heels."
"They all passed before us joyously and were swallowed up by the gate, their many feet pattering like heavy rain. You have to see what a commotion was stirred up in the farm. From their high perches, the fat peacocks, green and gold, crested with tulle, recognized the arrivals, and greeted them with cries like raucous trumpet blasts. The poultry house, which was falling asleep, woke up with a start. Everyone was on their feet: pigeons, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl. The henhouse went mad; the hens talk of making a night of it. Each sheep has brought back in its wool the fragrance of the wild alps, a little of the lively mountain air that intoxicates us and makes us dance."
"In the midst of all this commotion, the herd reaches its shelter. Nothing is as charming as this settling in. The old rams are moved to see their cribs again, the lambs, the little ones who were born in the mountains, who have never seen a farm, looked around them in wonder."
"But the most touching of all were the brave sheepdogs, so intent on their charges, distracted by nothing in the farmyard. The guard dog may call to them from his kennel, the bucket of the well, full of fresh water, may beckons, but they seek nothing, hear nothing, until all the animals have returned to their shed, and the big latch pushed shut on the small slatted gate, and the shepherds are seated at the table in the farm kitchen. Only then do the dogs agree to go to the kennel, and there, lapping up their food, they tell their farm comrades of what they did up in the mountains, a dark country where there are wolves and large purple foxgloves filled to the brim with dew."