rovencaux who compose the _bregado_, the pilgrim
company, that starts for Bethlehem; and Bethlehem is a village, always
within easy walking distance, here in Provence. Yet it is not wholly
simplicity that has brought about this shifting of the scene of the
Nativity from the hill country of Judaea to the hill country of
Southeastern France. The life and the look of the two lands have much in
common; and most impressively will their common character be felt by one
who walks here by night beneath the stars.

Here, as in the Holy Land, winding ways pass out from olive-orchards,
and on across dry reaches of upland broken by outcropping rocks and
scattered trees and bushes and sparsely thatched with short dry grass.
Through the silence will come now and then the tinkle of sheep-bells.
Sometimes a flock will be seen, dimly in the starlight, feeding beside
the road; and watching, from an overlooking standpoint on a rock or
little upswelling hill-top, will be its shepherd: a tall muffled figure
showing black against the loom of the sky. And it all is touched, in
the star-haze of those sombre solitudes, with the poetic realism of
unreality; while its deeper meaning is aroused by the stone crosses,
telling of Calvary, which are found at every parting of the ways. Told
to simple dwellers in such a land the Bible story was neither vague nor
remote. They knew its setting because their own surroundings were the
same. They practised the shepherd customs; the ass was their own beast
of burden; the tending of vines and fig-trees and olive-orchards was a
part of their daily lives. And so, naturally, the older noel writers
without any thought of anachronism, and the modern writers by poetic
instinct made complete their translation of the story of the Nativity
into their vernacular by transferring its scene to their own land.

XV

It was with Saboly's "Hou, de l'houstau!" that our singing began. It is
one of the series in his history of the Nativity and is the most popular
of all his noels: a dialogue between Saint Joseph and the Bethlehem
inn-keeper, that opens with a sweet and plaintive long-drawn note of
supplication as Saint Joseph timorously calls:

"O-o-oh, there, the house! Master! Mistress!
Varlet! Maid! Is _no_ one there?"

And then it continues with humble entreaties for shelter for himself and
his wife, who is very near her time; to which the host replies with
rough refusals for a while, but in the end grants grudg