The Christmas Kalends of Provence | Page 5

in it a touch of eagerness and
expectancy. While I still was drinking my coffee--in the excellence and
delicate service of which I recognized the friendly hand of Misè
Fougueiroun--there came a knock at my door; and, upon my answer,
the Vidame entered--looking so elate and wearing so blithe an air that

he easily might have been mistaken for a frolicsome middle-aged
sunbeam.
"Hurry! Hurry!" he cried, while still shaking both my hands. "This is a
day of days--we are going now to bring home the cacho-fiò, the
yule-log! Put on a pair of heavy shoes--the walking is rough on the
mountain-side. But be quick, and come down the moment that you are
ready. Now I must be off. There is a world for me to do!" And the old
gentleman bustled out of the room while he still was speaking, and in a
few moments I heard him giving orders to some one with great
animation on the terrace below.
When I went down stairs, five minutes later, I found him standing in
the hall by the open doorway: through which I saw, bright in the
morning light across the level landscape, King René's castle and the
church of Sainte-Marthe in Tarascon; and over beyond Tarascon, high
on the farther bank of the Rhône, Count Raymond's castle of Beaucaire;
and in the far distance, faintly, the jagged peaks of the Cévennes.
But that was no time for looking at landscapes. "Come along!" he cried.
"They all are waiting for us at the Mazet," and he hurried me down the
steps to the terrace and so around to the rear of the Château, talking
away eagerly as we walked.
"It is a most important matter," he said, "this bringing home of the
cacho-fiò. The whole family must take part in it. The head of the
family--the grandfather, the father, or the eldest son--must cut the tree;
all the others must share in carrying home the log that is to make the
Christmas fire. And the tree must be a fruit-bearing tree. With us it
usually is an almond or an olive. The olive especially is sacred. Our
people, getting their faith from their Greek ancestors, believe that
lightning never strikes it. But an apple-tree or a pear-tree will serve the
purpose, and up in the Alp region they burn the acorn-bearing oak.
What we shall do to-day is an echo of Druidical ceremonial--of the
time when the Druid priests cut the yule-oak and with their golden
sickles reaped the sacred mistletoe; but old Jan here, who is so stiff for
preserving ancient customs, does not know that this custom, like many
others that he stands for, is the survival of a rite."

While the Vidame was speaking we had turned from the terrace and
were nearing the Mazet--which diminutive of the Provençal word mas,
meaning farm-house, is applied to the farm establishment at Vièlmur
partly in friendliness and partly in indication of its dependence upon
the great house, the Château. At the arched entrance we found the farm
family awaiting us: Old Jan, the steward of the estate, and his wife
Elizo; Marius, their elder son, a man over forty, who is the active
manager of affairs; their younger son, Esperit, and their daughter
Nanoun; and the wife of Marius, Janetoun, to whose skirts a small child
was clinging while three or four larger children scampered about her in
a whir of excitement over the imminent event by which Christmas
really would be ushered in.
When my presentation had been accomplished--a matter a little
complicated in the case of old Jan, who, in common with most of the
old men hereabouts, speaks only Provençal--we set off across the home
vineyard, and thence went upward through the olive-orchards, to the
high region on the mountain-side where grew the almond-tree which
the Vidame and his steward in counsel together had selected for the
Christmas sacrifice.
Nanoun, a strapping red-cheeked black-haired bounce of twenty, ran
back into the Mazet as we started; and joined us again, while we were
crossing the vineyard, bringing with her a gentle-faced fair girl of her
own age who came shyly. The Vidame, calling her Magali, had a
cordial word for this new-comer; and nudged me to bid me mark how
promptly Esperit was by her side. "It is as good as settled," he
whispered. "They have been lovers since they were children. Magali is
the daughter of Elizo's foster-sister, who died when the child was born.
Then Elizo brought her home to the Mazet, and there she has lived her
whole lifelong. Esperit is waiting only until he shall be established in
the world to speak the word. And the scamp is in a hurry. Actually, he
is pestering me to put him at the head of the Lower