The Christmas Kalends of Provence | Page 3

life) tell in a more sublimate fashion of those same vanished races which marched on into Eternity in the shadowy morning of Time.
For this is an old land, where many peoples have lived their spans out and gone onward--yet have not passed utterly away. Far down in the popular heart remnants of the beliefs and of the habits of those ancients survive, entranced: yet not so numbed but that, on occasion, they may be aroused into a life that still in part is real. Even now, when the touch-stone is applied--when the thrilling of some nerve of memory or of instinct brings the present into close association with the past--there will flash into view still quick particles of seemingly long-dead creeds or customs rooted in a deep antiquity: the faiths and usages which of old were cherished by the Kelto-Ligurians, Phoenicians, Grecians, Romans, Goths, Saracens, whose blood and whose beliefs are blended in the Christian race which inhabits Provence to-day.
II
In the dominion of Vi��lmur there is an inner empire. Nominally, the Vidame is the reigning sovereign; but the power behind his throne is Mis�� Fougueiroun. The term "Mis��" is an old-fashioned Proven?al title of respect for women of the little bourgeoisie--tradesmen's and shopkeepers' wives and the like--that has become obsolescent since the Revolution and very generally has given place to the fine-ladyish "Madamo." With a little stretching, it may be rendered by our English old-fashioned title of "mistress"; and Mis�� Fougueiroun, who is the Vidame's housekeeper, is mistress over his household in a truly masterful way.
This personage is a little round woman, still plumply pleasing although she is rising sixty, who is arrayed always with an exquisite neatness in the dress--the sober black-and-white of the elder women, not the gay colours worn by the young girls--of the Pays d'Arles; and--although shortness and plumpness are at odds with majesty of deportment--she has, at least, the peremptory manner of one long accustomed to command. As is apt to be the way with little round women, her temper is of a brittle cast and her hasty rulings sometimes smack of injustice; but her nature (and this also is characteristic of her type) is so warmly generous that her heart easily can be caught into kindness on the rebound. The Vidame, who in spite of his antiquarian testiness is something of a philosopher, takes advantage of her peculiarities to compass such of his wishes as happen to run counter to her laws. His Machiavellian policy is to draw her fire by a demand of an extravagant nature; and then, when her lively refusal has set her a little in the wrong, handsomely to ask of her as a favour what he really requires--a method that never fails of success.
By my obviously sincere admiration of the Chateau and its surroundings, and by a discreet word or two implying a more personal admiration--a tribute which no woman of the Pays d'Arles ever is too old to accept graciously--I was so fortunate as to win Mis�� Fougueiroun's favour at the outset; a fact of which I was apprised on the evening of my arrival--it was at dinner, and the housekeeper herself had brought in a bottle of precious Chateauneuf-du-Pape--by the cordiality with which she joined forces with the Vidame in reprobating my belated coming to the Chateau. Actually, I was near a fortnight behind the time named in my invitation: which had stated expressly that Christmas began in Provence on the Feast of Saint Barbara, and that I was expected not later than that day--December 4th.
"Monsieur should have been here," said the housekeeper with decision, "when we planted the blessed Saint Barbara's grain. And now it is grown a full span. Monsieur will not see Christmas at all!"
But my apologetic explanation that I never even had heard of Saint Barbara's grain only made my case the more deplorable.
"Mai!" exclaimed Mis�� Fougueiroun, in the tone of one who faces suddenly a real calamity. "Can it be that there are no Christians in monsieur's America? Is it possible that down there they do not keep the Christmas feast at all?"
To cover my confusion, the Vidame intervened with an explanation which made America appear in a light less heathenish. "The planting of Saint Barbara's grain," he said, "is a custom that I think is peculiar to the South of France. In almost every household in Provence, and over in Languedoc too, on Saint Barbara's day the women fill two, sometimes three, plates with wheat or lentils which they set afloat in water and then stand in the warm ashes of the fire-place or on a sunny window ledge to germinate. This is done in order to foretell the harvest of the coming year, for as Saint Barbara's grain grows well or ill so will the harvest of the coming year