my coffee--in the excellence and
delicate service of which I recognized the friendly hand of Mise
Fougueiroun--there came a knock at my door; and, upon my answer, the
Vidame entered--looking so elate and wearing so blithe an air that he
easily might have been mistaken for a frolicsome middle-aged sunbeam.

"Hurry! Hurry!" he cried, while still shaking both my hands. "This is a
day of days--we are going now to bring home the _cacho-fio_, the
yule-log! Put on a pair of heavy shoes--the walking is rough on the
mountain-side. But be quick, and come down the moment that you are
ready. Now I must be off. There is a world for me to do!" And the old
gentleman bustled out of the room while he still was speaking, and in a
few moments I heard him giving orders to some one with great animation
on the terrace below.

When I went down stairs, five minutes later, I found him standing in the
hall by the open doorway: through which I saw, bright in the morning
light across the level landscape, King Rene's castle and the church of
Sainte-Marthe in Tarascon; and over beyond Tarascon, high on the farther
bank of the Rhone, Count Raymond's castle of Beaucaire; and in the far
distance, faintly, the jagged peaks of the Cevennes.

But that was no time for looking at landscapes. "Come along!" he cried.
"They all are waiting for us at the Mazet," and he hurried me down the
steps to the terrace and so around to the rear of the Chateau, talking
away eagerly as we walked.

"It is a most important matter," he said, "this bringing home of the
_cacho-fio_. The whole family must take part in it. The head of the
family--the grandfather, the father, or the eldest son--must cut the
tree; all the others must share in carrying home the log that is to make
the Christmas fire. And the tree must be a fruit-bearing tree. With us
it usually is an almond or an olive. The olive especially is sacred. Our
people, getting their faith from their Greek ancestors, believe that
lightning never strikes it. But an apple-tree or a pear-tree will serve
the purpose, and up in the Alp region they burn the acorn-bearing oak.
What we shall do to-day is an echo of Druidical ceremonial--of the time
when the Druid priests cut the yule-oak and with their golden sickles
reaped the sacred mistletoe; but old Jan here, who is so stiff for
preserving ancient customs, does not know that this custom, like many
others that he stands for, is the survival of a rite."

While the Vidame w