While our own more orthodox yule-log ceremonial was in progress, the
good Elizo and Janetoun--upon whom the responsibility of the supper
rested--evidently were a prey to anxious thoughts. They whispered
together and cast uneasy glances toward the chimney, into the broad
corners of which the various cooking vessels had been moved to make way
for the _cacho-fio_; and the moment that the cup of benediction had
passed their lips they precipitated themselves upon the fire-place and
replaced the pots and pans for a final heating upon the coals.
The long table had been set before our arrival and was in perfect
readiness--covered with a fine white linen cloth, sacredly reserved for
use at high festivals, that fairly sparkled in the blaze of light cast
by the overhanging petroleum lamp. Yet the two ceremonial candles, one
at each end of the table, also were lighted; and were watched anxiously
as the supper went on: for should the wick of one of the Christmas
candles fall before the supper is ended, the person toward whom it
points in falling will pass from earth before the Christmas feast is set
again. But Mise Fougueiroun, to guard against this ominous catastrophe,
had played a trick on Fate by providing wax candles with wicks so fine
that they wasted away imperceptibly in their own flame.
Beside those fateless candles were the harvest harbingers, the plates on
which was growing Saint Barbara's grain--so vigorous and so freshly
green that old Jan rubbed his hands together comfortably as he said to
the Vidame: "Ah, we need have no fears for the harvest that is coming
in this blessed year!" In the centre of the table, its browned crust
slashed with a cross, was the great loaf of Christmas bread, _pan
Calendau_; on which was a bunch of holly tied with the white pith of
rushes--the "marrow" of the rush, that is held to be an emblem of
strength. Old Jan, the master of the house, cut the loaf into as many
portions as there were persons present; with one double-portion over to
be given to some poor one in charity--"the portion of the good God." It
is of a miraculous nature, this blessed bread: the sailors of Provence
carry morsels of it with them on their voyages, and by strewing its
crumbs upon the troubled waters stay the tempests of the sea.
For the rest, the table had down its middle a line of dishes--many of
them old faience of Moustiers, the mere sight of which would have
thrilled a collector's heart--heaped with the nougat and the other
sweets over the making of which our housekeeper and her lieutenants so
soulfully had toiled. And on the table in the corner were fruits and
nuts and wines.
Grace always is said before the Great Supper--a simple formula ending
with the prayer of the yule-log that if another year there are no more,
there may be no less. It is the custom that this blessing shall be asked
by the youngest child of the family who can speak the words: a pretty
usage which sometimes makes the blessing go very queerly indeed. Our
little Tounin came to the front again in this matter, exhibiting an air
of grave responsibility which showed that he had been well drilled; and
it was with quite a saintly look on his little face that he folded his
hands together and said very earnestly: "God bless all that we are going
to eat, and if we are no less next year may we be no more!" At which
everybody looked at Janetoun and laughed.
In our seating a due order of precedence was observed. Old Jan, the head
of the family, presided, with the Vidame and myself on his right and
with Elizo's father and mother on his left; and thence the company went
downward by age and station to the foot of the table, where were grouped
the servants from the Chateau and the workmen on the farm. But no other
distinction was made. All were served alike and all drank together as
equals when the toasts were called. The servers were Elizo and Janetoun,
with Nanoun and Magali for assistants; and those four, although they
took their places at the table when each course had been brought on, had
rather a Passover time of it: for they ate as it were with their loins
girded and with full or empty dishes imminent to their hands.
The stout Nanoun--whose robust body thrills easily to superstitious
fears--was still farther handicapped in her own eating by her zealous
effort so to stuff the family cat as to give that animal no excuse for
uttering evil-portending miaus. For it is well known that should the
family cat fall to miauing on Christmas Eve, and especially while the
supper is in progress, very dreadful things surely will happen to the
family during the ensuing year. Fortunately Nanoun's preventive measures
averted this calamity; yet were they like to have overshot their mark.
Only the cat's natural abstemiousness saved her that night from dying of
a surfeit--and in agony surely provocative of the very cries which
Nanoun sought to restrain!
As I have said, the Great Supper must be "lean," and is restricted to
certain dishes which in no wise can be changed; but a rich leanness is
possible in a country where olive-oil takes the place of animal fat in
cooking, and where the accumulated skill of ages presides over the
kitchen fire. The principal dish is the _raito_--a ragout made of
delicately fried fish served in a sauce flavoured with wine and
capers--whereof the tradition goes back a round twenty-five hundred
years: to the time when the Phokaean housewives brought with them to
Massalia (the Marseille of to-day) the happy mystery of its making from
their Grecian homes. But this excellent dish was not lost to Greece
because it was gained to Gaul: bearing the same name and made in the
same fashion it is eaten by the Greeks of the present day. It usually is
made of dried codfish in Provence, where the cod is held in high esteem;
but is most delicately toothsome when made of eels.
The second course of the Great Supper also is fish, which may be of any
sort and served in any way--in our case it was a perch-like variety of
dainty pan-fish, fresh from the Rhone. A third course of fish sometimes
is served, but the third course usually is snails cooked in a rich brown
sauce strongly flavoured with garlic. The Provencal snails, which feed
in a _gourmet_ fashion upon vine-leaves, are peculiarly delicious--and
there was a murmur of delight from our company as the four women brought
to the table four big dishes full of them; and for a while there was
only the sound of eager munching, mixed with the clatter on china of the
empty shells. To extract them, we had the strong thorns, three or four
inches long, of the wild acacia; and on these the little brown morsels
were carried to the avid mouths and eaten with a bit of bread sopped in
the sauce--and then the shell was subjected to a vigorous sucking, that
not a drop of the sauce lingering within it should be lost.
To the snails succeeded another dish essentially Provencal, _carde_. The
carde is a giant thistle that grows to a height of five or six feet, and
is so luxuriantly magnificent both in leaf and in flower that it
deserves a place among ornamental plants. The edible portion is the
stem--blanched like celery, which it much resembles, by being
earthed-up--cooked with a white sauce flavoured with garlic. The garlic,
however, is a mistake, since it overpowers the delicate taste of the
carde--but garlic is the overlord of all things eatable in Provence. I
was glad when we passed on to the celery, with which the first section
of the supper came to an end.
The second section was such an explosion of sweets as might fly into
space should a comet collide with a confectioner's shop--nougat,
_fougasso_, a great _poumpo_, compotes, candied-fruits, and a whole
nightmare herd of rich cakes on which persons not blessed with the most
powerful organs of digestion surely would go galloping to the country of
dreadful dreams. This was prodigality; but even the bare requirements of
the case were lavish, the traditional law of the Great Supper ordaining
that not fewer than seven different sweets shall be served. Mise
Fougueiroun, however, was not the person to stand upon the parsimonious
letter of any eating law. Here had been her opportunity, and she had run
amuck through all the range of sugary things!
Of the dessert of nuts and fruit the notable features were grapes and
winter-melons. Possibly because they are an obscure survival of some
Bacchic custom connected with the celebration of the winter solstice,
the grapes are considered a very necessary part of the Great Supper; but
as Provencal grapes are of a soft substance and soon wither, though a
world of care is taken to preserve a few bunches until Christmas, this
part of the feast usually is a ceremony rather than a satisfaction.
But our melons were a pure vegetable delight. These winter-melons are a
species of cantaloupe, but of a firmer texture than the summer fruit,
sowed late in the season and laid away a little green on beds of straw
in cool and dark and well-aired rooms. Thus cared for, they will keep
until the end of January; but they are preserved especially for
Christmas, and few survive beyond that day. They are of American origin:
as I discovered quite by chance while reading a collection of delightful
letters, but lately published, written near three hundred years ago by
Dr. Antoine Novel; that Provencal naturalist, whom Buffon quotes under
the wrongly Latinized name of Natalis, sometime physician to the Duke of
Medina-Sidonia in Spain. He was a rolling stone of a naturalist, the
excellent Novel; but his gatherings were many, and most of them were for
the benefit of his beloved Provence. It was from "Sainct Luquar," under
date of March 24, 1625, that he wrote to his friend Peiresc in Aix: "I
send you by the Patron Armand a little box in which are two specimens of
ore ... and ten sorts of seeds of the most exquisite fruits and flowers
of the Indies; and to fill the chinks I have put in the seeds of
winter-melons." And in a letter of June 12th, following, he wrote: "I
hope that you have received my letter sent by the Patron Armand of
Martigues, who sailed in Holy Week for that town, by whom I sent you
some seeds of exquisite fruits and flowers of the Indies, together with
two specimens of ore, the one from Potosi and the other from
Terra-Firma, and also a box of seven winter-melons of that country." And
so the winter-melons came into Provence from somewhere on the Spanish
Main. I could wish that my gentleman had been a bit more definite in
his geography. As he leaves the matter, his melons may have come from
anywhere between the Orinoco and Florida; and down in that region
somewhere, no doubt, they still are to be found.
With the serious part of the supper we drank the ordinary small wine
diluted with water; but with the dessert was paraded a gallant company
of dusty bottles containing ancient vintages which through many
ripening years had been growing richer by feeding upon their own
excellence in the wine-room of the Mazet or the cellar of the Chateau.
All were wines of the country, it being a point of honour in Provencal
households of all degrees that only from Provencal vineyards--or from
the near-by vineyards of Languedoc--shall come the Christmas wines.
Therefore we drank rich and strong Tavel, and delicate Ledenon, and
heavy Frontignan--the cloyingly-sweet Mouscat de Maroussa--and
home-made champagne (the _clairette_, with a superabundance of pop and
fizz but undeniably cider-like), and at last, for a climax, old
Chateauneuf-du-Pape: the dean of the Provencal vinous faculty, rich,
smooth, delicate, with a slightly aromatic after-taste that the
dallying bees bring to the vine-blossoms from the blossoms of the
wild-thyme. Anciently it filled the cups over which chirped the
sprightly Popes of Avignon; and in later times, only forty years back,
it was the drink of the young Felibrien poets--Mistral, Roumanille,
Aubanel, Mathieu and the rest--while they tuned and set a-going their
lyres. But it is passing into a tradition now. The old vines, the
primitive stock, were slain by the phylloxera, and the new vines
planted to replace them do not produce a wine like that over which
Popes and poets once were gay. Only in rich old cellars, such as that
of Vielmur, may still be found a bin or two of dust-grey Papal
veterans: survivors of the brave army that has gurgled its life out in
a happy past!