upon the popular heart:
this pathetic story of the child "blind from her birth" who pleads with
her mother that she also may go with the rest to Bethlehem, urging that
though she cannot see "the lovely golden face" she still may touch the
Christ-Child's hand.

And when, all thrilling, to the stable she was come
She placed the little hand of Jesus on her heart--
And saw him whom she touched!

[Illustration: "THE BLIND GIRL"--NOEL]

But without the music, and with only these crude translations in which
is lost also the music of the words, I feel that I am giving very much
less than the true effect of these Provencal Christmas songs. To be
appreciated, to be understood, they must be heard as I heard them: sung
by that Christmas company, with Magali's tenderly vibrant voice leading
the chorus in which every one of those singing Provencaux joined. Even
the old grandfather--still standing at the fire-place--marked the time
of the music with the knife that he held in his hand; and his thin old
voice piped in with the others, and had a gay or a tender ring in it
with the changing melody, for all that it was so cracked and shrill.

I am persuaded, so thoroughly did they all enjoy their own carolling,
that the singing of noels would have gone on until broad daylight had it
not been for the intervention of the midnight mass. But the mass of
Christmas Eve--or, rather, of Christmas morning--is a matter not only of
pleasure but of obligation. Even those upon whom churchly requirements
at other times rest lightly rarely fail to attend it; and to the
faithful it is the most touchingly beautiful--as Easter is the most
joyous--church festival of the year.

By eleven o'clock, therefore, we were under way for our walk of a mile
or so down the long slope of the hill side to the village: a little
clump of houses threaded by narrow crooked streets and still in part
surrounded by the crusty remnant of a battlemented wall--that had its
uses in the days when robber barons took their airings and when
pillaging Saracens came sailing up the slack-water lower reaches of the
Rhone. Down the white road in the moonlight we went in a straggling
company, while more and more loudly came to us through the crisp night
air the sound of the Christmas bells.

Presently some one started a very sweet and plaintive noel: fairly
heart-wringing in its tender beseeching and soft lament, yet with a
consoling under-note to which it constantly r