V

As Christmas Day drew near I observed that Mise Fougueiroun walked
thoughtfully and seemed to be oppressed by heavy cares. When I met her
on the stairs or about the passages her eyes had the far-off look of
eyes prying into a portentous future; and when I spoke to her she
recovered her wandering wits with a start. At first I feared that some
grave misfortune had overtaken her; but I was reassured, upon applying
myself to the Vidame, by finding that her seeming melancholy distraction
was due solely to the concentration of all her faculties upon the
preparation of the Christmas feast.

Her case, he added, was not singular. It was the same just then with all
the housewives of the region: for the chief ceremonial event of
Christmas in Provence is the _Gros Soupa_ that is eaten upon Christmas
Eve, and of even greater culinary importance is the dinner that is eaten
upon Christmas Day--wherefore does every woman brood and labour that her
achievement of those meals may realize her high ideal! Especially does
the preparation of the Great Supper compel exhaustive thought. Being of
a vigil, the supper necessarily is "lean"; and custom has fixed
unalterably the principal dishes of which it must be composed. Thus
limited straitly, the making of it becomes a struggle of genius against
material conditions; and its successful accomplishment is comparable
with the perfect presentment by a great poet of some well-worn elemental
truth in a sonnet--of which the triumphant beauty comes less from the
integral concept than from the exquisite felicity of expression that
gives freshness to a hackneyed subject treated in accordance with
severely constraining rules.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Provencal housewives give the
shortest of the December days to soulful creation in the kitchen, and
the longest of the December nights to searching for inspired culinary
guidance in dreams. They take such things very seriously, those good
women: nor is their seriousness to be wondered at when we reflect that
Saint Martha, of blessed memory, ended her days here in Provence; and
that this notable saint, after delivering the country from the ravaging
Tarasque, no doubt set up in her own house at Tarascon an ideal standard
of housekeeping that still is in force. Certainly, the women of this
region pattern themselves so closely upon their sainted model as to be
even more cumbered with much serving than are womenkind elsewhere.

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