home-bringing ceremony being thus ended, we walked back to the
Chateau together--startling Esperit and Magali standing hand in hand,
lover-like, in the archway; and when we were come to the terrace, and
were seated snugly in a sunny corner, the Vidame told me of a very
stately yule-log gift that was made anciently in Aix--and very likely
elsewhere also--in feudal times.

In Aix it was the custom, when the Counts of Provence still lived and
ruled there, for the magistrates of the city each year at Christmas-tide
to carry in solemn procession a huge _cacho-fio_ to the palace of their
sovereign; and there formally to present to him--or, in his absence, to
the Grand Seneschal on his behalf--this their free-will and good-will
offering. And when the ceremony of presentation was ended the city
fathers were served with a collation at the Count's charges, and were
given the opportunity to pledge him loyally in his own good wine.

Knowing Aix well, I was able to fill in the outlines of the Vidame's
bare statement of fact and also to give it a background. What a joy the
procession must have been to see! The grey-bearded magistrates, in their
velvet caps and robes, wearing their golden chains of office; the great
log, swung to shoulder-poles and borne by leathern-jerkined henchmen;
surely drummers and fifers, for such a ceremonial would have been
impossibly incomplete in Provence without a _tambourin_ and _galoubet_;
doubtless a brace of ceremonial trumpeters; and a seemly guard in front
and rear of steel-capped and steel-jacketed halbardiers. All these
marching gallantly through the narrow, yet stately, Aix streets; with
comfortable burghers and well-rounded matrons in the doorways looking
on, and pretty faces peeping from upper windows and going all a-blushing
because of the over-bold glances of the men-at-arms! And then fancy the
presentation in the great hall of the castle; and the gay feasting; and
the merry wagging of grey-bearded chins as the magistrates cried all
together, "To the health of the Count!"--and tossed their wine!

I protest that I grew quite melancholy as I thought how delightful it
all was--and how utterly impossible it all is in these our own dull
times! In truth I never can dwell upon such genially picturesque doings
of the past without feeling that Fate treated me very shabbily in not
making me one of my own ancestors--and so setting me back in that
hard-fighting, gay-going, and eminently light-opera age.