mers believe, for instance, that these days which now are
passing--the twelve days, called _coumtie_, immediately preceding
Christmas--are foretellers of the weather for the new twelve months to
come; each in its turn, by rain or sunshine or by heat or cold, showing
the character of the correspondingly numbered month of the new year.
That the twelve prophetic days are those which immediately precede the
solstice puts their endowment with prophetic power very far back into
antiquity. Our farmers, too, have the saying, 'When Christmas falls on
a Friday you may sow in ashes'--meaning that the harvest of the ensuing
year surely will be so bountiful that seed sown anywhere will grow; and
in this saying there is a strong trace of Venus worship, for
Friday--Divendre in Provencal--is the day sacred to the goddess of
fertility and bears her name. That belief comes to us from the time when
the statue of Aphrodite, dug up not long since at Marseille, was
worshipped here. Our _Pater de Calendo_--our curious Christmas prayer
for abundance during the coming year--clearly is a Pagan supplication
that in part has been diverted into Christian ways; and in like manner
comes to us from Paganism the whole of our yule-log ceremonial."

The Vidame rose from the table. "Our coffee will be served in the
library," he said. He spoke with a perceptible hesitation, and there was
anxiety in his tone as he added: "Mise makes superb coffee; but
sometimes, when I have offended her, it is not good at all." And he
visibly fidgeted until the coffee arrived, and proved by its excellence
that the housekeeper had been too noble to take revenge.

III

In the early morning a lively clatter rising from the farm-yard came
through my open window, along with the sunshine and the crisp freshness
of the morning air. My apartment was in the southeast angle of the
Chateau, and my bedroom windows--overlooking the inner court--commanded
the view along the range of the Alpilles to the Luberoun and
Mont-Ventour, a pale great opal afloat in waves of clouds; while from
the windows of my sitting-room I saw over Mont-Majour and Arles far
across the level Camargue to the hazy horizon below which lay the
Mediterraenean.

In the court-yard there was more than the ordinary morning commotion of
farm life, and the buzz of talk going on at the well and the racing and
shouting of a parcel of children all had in it a touch of eagerness and
expectancy. While I still was drinking