peace and amity for which the word Christmas is a synonym in all
Christian lands. It is the rule of these family gatherings at Christmas
time in Provence that all heartburnings and rancours, which may have
sprung up during the year, then shall be cut down; and even if sometimes
they quickly grow again, as no doubt they do now and then, it makes for
happiness that they shall be thus banished from the peace-feast of the
year.

Janetoun and one of her sisters-in-law were the only members of our
party who had a hatchet to bury; and the burial was over so
quickly--being but an extra hug and an explosion of kisses--that I
should have known nothing about it but for the over-long tongue of Mise
Fougueiroun: who, in a kindly way, is as thorough-going a gossip as ever
lived. Of all things in the world to quarrel about, this quarrel had
grown out of a spirited difference of opinion as to how the heel of a
knitted stocking should be turned! But the matter had come to be quite
of a seriousness, and all the family breathed freer when those
resounding peace-kisses were given and received. Actually, as I happened
to learn later, the reconciliation was pushed to such an extreme that
each of them incontinently adopted the other's knitting creed--with the
curious result that they now are in a fair way to have a fresh quarrel
for next Christmas out of the same matter on inverted lines! It was
before the lighting of the yule-log that the feud of the stocking heels
thus happily (even though only temporarily) was pacified, and the family
festival was cloudless from first to last.

When the serious part of the supper had been disposed of and the mere
palate-tickling period of the dessert had come, I was much interested in
observing that the talk--mainly carried on by the elders--was turned
with an obviously deliberate purpose upon family history; and especially
upon the doings of those who in the past had brought honour upon the
family name. And I was still more interested when, later, the Vidame
informed me that it is the Provencal custom at the Christmas festival
for the old thus to instruct the young and so to keep family tradition
alive. No doubt there is in this a dim survival of ancestor-worship; but
I should be glad to see so excellent a relic of paganism preserved in
the Christmas ritual of my own land.

The chief ancestral glory of the family of the Mazet is its close
blood-relationship with the gallant Andre Etienne: that drummer o