The day dragged a little when we had finished in the kitchen with the
giving of Christmas portions and the last of the farm-hands, calling
back "_Boni festo!_," had gone away. For the womenkind, of course, there
was a world to do; and Mise Fougueiroun whisked us out of her dominions
with a pretty plain statement that our company was less desirable than
our room. But for the men there was only idle waiting until night should
come.
As for the Vidame--who is a fiery fume of a little old gentleman, never
happy unless in some way busily employed--this period of stagnation was
so galling that in sheer pity I mounted him upon his hobby and set him
to galloping away. 'Twas an easy matter, and the stimulant that I
administered was rather dangerously strong: for I brought up the
blackest beast in the whole herd of his abominations by asking him if
there were not some colour of reason in the belief that Marius lay not
at Vielmur but at Glanum--now Saint-Remy-de-Provence--behind the lines
of Roman wall which exist there to this day.
So far as relieving the strain of the situation was concerned, my
expedient was a complete success; but the storm that I raised was like
to have given the Vidame such an attack of bilious indigestion begotten
of anger as would have spoiled the Great Supper for him; and as for
myself, I was overwhelmed for some hours by his avalanche of words. But
the long walk that we took in the afternoon, that he might give me
convincing proof of the soundness of his archaeological theories,
fortunately set matters right again; and when we returned in the late
day to the Chateau my old friend had recovered his normal serenity of
soul.
As we passed the Mazet in our afternoon walk, we stopped to greet the
new arrivals there, come to make the family gathering complete: two more
married children, with a flock of their own little ones, and Elizo's
father and mother--a bowed little rosy-cheeked old woman and a bowed
lean old man, both well above eighty years. There was a lively passage
of friendly greetings between them all and the Vidame; and it was quite
delightful to see how the bowed little old woman kindled and bridled
when the Vidame gallantly protested that she grew younger and handsomer
every year.
A tall ladder stood against the Mazet, and the children were engaged in
hanging tiny wheat-sheaves along the eaves: the Christmas portion of the
birds. In old times, the Vidame explained, it was the general custom for
children to make this pretty offering--that the birds of heaven, finding
themselves so served, might descend in clouds to the feast prepared for
them by Christian bounty. But nowadays, he added, sighing, the custom
rarely was observed.
Other charitable usages of Christmas had vanished, he continued, because
the need for them had passed away with the coming of better times. Save
in the large cities, there are very few really poor people in Provence
now. It is a rich land, and it gives to its hard-working inhabitants a
good living; with only a pinch now and then when a cold winter or a dry
summer or a wet harvest puts things out of gear. But of old the
conditions were sadly different and there was need for all that charity
could give.
In those times, when in comfortable homes the Christmas feast was set,
there would be heard outside a plaintive voice calling: "Give something
from your yule-log to the sorrowful poor!" And then the children
quickly, would carry out to the calling poor one good portions of food.
Pious families, also, were wont to ask some poor friend or acquaintance,
or even a poor passing stranger, to eat the Great Supper with them; and
of the fragments a part would be sent to the poor brethren in the Hostel
de Dieu: which offerings were called always "the share of the good
God."
In many towns and villages the offerings of Christian bounty were
collected in a curious way. A gigantic figure of wicker-work--called
Melchior, after one of the three Kings of the Epiphany--clothed in a
grotesque fashion and with a huge pannier strapped to his back, was
mounted upon an ass and so was taken from door to door to gather for the
poor whatever the generous would give of food. Into the big basket
charitable hands threw figs, almonds, bread, cheese, olives, sausages:
and when the brave Melchior had finished his round his basket was
emptied upon a table at the church door, and then all the poor people of
the parish were free to come there and receive portions of those good
things--while the church bells rang, and while there blazed beside the
table a torch in representation of the Star which guided Melchior and
his fellow kings to Bethlehem.
A reminiscence of this general charity still survives in the little town
of Sollies, tucked away in the mountains not far from Toulon. There, at
Christmas time, thirteen poor people known as "the Apostles" (though
there is one to spare) receive at the town-house a dole of two pounds of
meat, two loaves of bread, some figs and almonds, and a few sous. And
throughout Provence the custom still is general that each well-to-do
family shall send a portion of its Christmas loaf--the _pan
calendau_--to some friend or neighbour to whom Fortune has been less
kind. But, happily, this gift nowadays often is a mere friendly
compliment, like the gift of _fougasso_; for the times are past when
weak-kneed and spasmodic charity dealt with real poverty in Provence.
X
'Twas with such kindly reminiscences of old-time benevolence, rather
than with explosive archaeological matters, that I kept the Vidame from
falling again a-fuming--while we waited through the dusk for the coming
of seven o'clock, at which hour the festivities at the Mazet were to
begin. Our waiting place was the candle-lit salon: a stately old
apartment floored formally with squares of black and white marble,
furnished in the formal style of the eighteenth century, and hung around
with formal family portraits and curious old prints in which rather lax
classical subjects were treated with a formal severity. The library
being our usual habitat, I inferred that our change of quarters was in
honour of the day. It was much to my liking; for in that antiquely
ordered room--and the presence of the Vidame helped the illusion--I felt
always as though I had stepped backward into the thick of eighteenth
century romance. But for the Vidame, although he also loves its old time
flavour, the salon had no charms just then; and when the glass-covered
clock on the mantle chimed from among its gilded cupids the
three-quarters he arose with a brisk alacrity and said that it was time
for us to be off.
Our march--out through the rear door of the Chateau and across the
court-yard to the Mazet--was processional. All the household went with
us. The Vidame gallantly gave his arm to Mise Fougueiroun; I followed
with her first officer--a sauce-box named Mouneto, so plumply provoking
and charming in her Arlesian dress that I will not say what did or did
not happen in the darkness as we passed the well! A little in our rear
followed the house-servants, even to the least; and in the Mazet already
were gathered, with the family, the few work-people of the estate who
had not gone to their own homes. For the Great Supper is a patriarchal
feast, to which in Christian fellowship come the master and the master's
family and all of their servitors and dependants on equal terms.
A broad stream of light came out through the open doorway of the
farm-house, and with it a great clatter and buzz of talk--that increased
tenfold as we entered, and a cry of "_Boni festo!_" came from the whole
company at once. As for the Vidame, he so radiated cordiality that he
seemed to be the veritable Spirit of Christmas (incarnate at the age of
sixty, and at that period of the nineteenth century when stocks and
frilled shirts were worn), and his joyful old legs were near to dancing
as he went among the company with warm-hearted greetings and
outstretched hands.
All told, we numbered above forty; but the great living-room of the
Mazet, notwithstanding the space taken by the supper-table ranged down
the middle of it, easily could have held another score. Save in its
size, and in the completeness of its appointments, this room was
thoroughly typical of the main apartment found in farm-houses throughout
Provence. The floor was laid with stone slabs and the ceiling was
supported upon very large smoke-browned beams--from which hung hams, and
strings of sausages, and ropes of garlic, and a half-dozen bladders
filled with lard. More than a third of the rear wall was taken up by the
huge fire-place, that measured ten feet across and seven feet from the
stone mantle-shelf to the floor. In its centre, with room on each side
in the chimney-corners for a chair (a space often occupied by large
lockers for flour and salt), was the fire-bed--crossed by a pair of tall
andirons, which flared out at the top into little iron baskets (often
used, with a filling of live coals, as plate-warmers) and which were
furnished with hooks at different heights to support the
roasting-spits. Hanging from the mantle-shelf was a short curtain to
hold the smoke in check; and on the shelf were various utilitarian
ornaments: a row of six covered jars, of old faience, ranging in holding
capacity from a gill to three pints, each lettered with the name of its
contents--saffron, pepper, tea, salt, sugar, flour; and with these some
burnished copper vessels, and a coffee-pot, and a half-dozen of the tall
brass or pewter lamps for burning olive-oil--which long ago superseded
the primitive _caleu_, dating from Roman or from still earlier times,
and which now themselves practically have been superseded by lamps
burning petroleum.
To the right of the fire-place was the stone sink, with shelves above it
on which was a brilliant array of polished copper and tin pots and pans.
To the left was the covered bread-trough, above which hung the large
salt and flour boxes and the grated bread-closet--this last looking like
a child's crib gone wrong--all of dark wood ornamented with carving and
with locks and hinges of polished iron. On the opposite side of the
room, matching these pieces in colour and carving and polished
iron-work, were a tall buffet and a tall clock--the clock of so
insistent a temperament that it struck in duplicate, at an interval of a
minute, the number of each hour. A small table stood in a corner, and in
ordinary times the big dining-table was ranged along one of the walls,
with benches on each side of it supplemented by rush-bottomed chairs.
Near the bread-trough was hung a long-armed steel-balance with a brass
dish suspended by brass chains, all brilliant from scouring with soap
and sand; an ancient fowling-piece rested in wooden crutches driven
between the stones on one side of the clock, and on the other side was
hung a glittering copper warming-pan--a necessary comfort here of cold
nights in fireless rooms. By way of ornament, three or four
violently-colored lithographs were tacked against the walls, together
with a severely formal array--a pyramidal trophy--of family photographs.
Excepting the warming-pan and the two arm-chairs ordinarily in the
chimney-corners, there was no provision in the room for bodily ease or
comfort: a lack unperceived by its occupants, but which an American
house-wife--missing her many small luxuries and conveniences--would have
found sharply marked.