This solemn midnight, which sounds from all the bells of the town, falls
sadly into the pale night of the sick. The hospital is silent, lit only
by the night-lamps suspended from the ceiling. Great running shadows
flit over the beds and bare walls in a perpetual balancing, which seems
to image the heavy respiration of all the sufferers lying there.
At times, dreamers talk high in their feverish sleep, or groan in the
clutches of nightmares; while from the street there mounts up a vague
rumor of feet and voices, mingled in the cold and sonorous night like
sounds made under a cathedral porch.
Salvette feels the gathering haste, the mystery of a religious feast
crossing the hours of sleep, the hanging forth in the dark village of
the blind light of lanterns and the illumination of the windows of the
church.
"Are you asleep, Bernadou?"
Softly, on the little table next his comrade's bed, Salvette has placed
a bottle of _vin de Lunel_ and a loaf of bread, a pretty Christmas loaf,
where the twig of holly is planted straight in the centre.
Bernadou opens his eyes encircled with fever. By the indistinct glow of
the night-lamps and under the white reflection of the great roofs where
the moonlight lies dazzlingly on the snow, this improvised Christmas
feast seems but a fantastic dream.
[Illustration: The Hospital]
"Come, arouse thee, comrade! It shall not be said that two sons of
Provençe have let this midnight pass without sprinkling a drop of
claret!" And Salvette lifts him up with the tenderness of a mother. He
fills the goblets, cuts the bread, and then they drink and talk of
Provençe.
Little by little Bernadou grows animated and moved by the occasion,--the
white wine, the remembrances! With that child-like manner which the sick
find in the depths of their feebleness he asks Salvette to sing a
Provençal Noël. His comrade asks which: "The Host," or "The Three
Kings," or "St. Joseph Has Told Me"?
"No; I like the 'Shepherds' best. We chant that always at home."
"Then, here's for the 'Shepherds.'"
And in a low voice, his head between the curtains, Salvette began to
sing.
All at once, at the last couplet, when the shepherds, coming to see
Jesus in His stable, have placed in the manger their offerings of fresh
eggs and cheeses, and when, bowing with an affable air,
"Joseph says, 'Go! be very sage:
Return, and make you good voyage,
Shepherds,
Take your leave!'"
--all at once poor Bernadou slipped and fell heavily on the pillow. His
comrade thought he had fallen asleep, and called him, shook him. But the
wounded boy rested immovable, and the little twig of holly lying across
the rigid cloth, seemed already the green palm they place upon the
pillows of the dead.
Salvette understood at last. Then, in tears, a little weakened by the
feast and by his grief, he raised in full voice, through the silence of
the room, the joyous refrain of Provençe,--
"Shepherds,
Take your leave!"
_A Breton Peasant's Romance._
"Eyes dark; face thin, long, and
sallow; nose aquiline, but not
straight, having a peculiar inclination
towards the left cheek;
expression, therefore, sinister."
_Dickens._