nce, to draw him outside the Roman
lines. Yet that he left them with a pained reluctance was so evident
that I could not but feel some twinges of remorse--until my interest in
what he told me made me forget my heartlessness in shunting to a side
track the subject on which he so loves to talk.

In a way, the creche takes in Provence the place of the Christmas-tree,
of which Northern institution nothing is known here; but it is closer to
the heart of Christmas than the tree, being touched with a little of the
tender beauty of the event which it represents in so quaint a guise. Its
invention is ascribed to Saint Francis of Assisi. The chronicle of his
Order tells that this seraphic man, having first obtained the permission
of the Holy See, represented the principal scenes of the Nativity in a
stable; and that in the stable so transformed he celebrated mass and
preached to the people. All this is wholly in keeping with the character
of Saint Francis; and, certainly, the creche had its origin in Italy in
his period, and in the same conditions which formed his graciously
fanciful soul. Its introduction into Provence is said to have been in
the time of John XXII.--the second of the Avignon Popes, who came to
the Pontificate in the year 1316--and by the Fathers of the Oratory of
Marseille: from which centre it rapidly spread abroad through the land
until it became a necessary feature of the Christmas festival both in
churches and in homes.

Obviously, the creche is an offshoot from the miracle plays and
mysteries which had their beginning a full two centuries earlier. These
also survive vigorously in Provence in the "Pastouralo": an acted
representation of the Nativity that is given each year during the
Christmas season by amateurs or professionals in every city and town,
and in almost every village. Indeed, the Pastouralo is so large a
subject, and so curious and so interesting, that I venture here only to
allude to it. Nor has it, properly--although so intensely a part of the
Provencal Christmas--a place in this paper, which especially deals with
the Christmas of the home.

In the farm-houses, and in the dwellings of the middle-class, the creche
is placed always in the living-room, and so becomes an intimate part of
the family life. On a table set in a corner is represented a rocky
hill-side--dusted with flour to represent snow--rising in terraces
tufted with moss and grass and little trees and broken by foot-paths and
a w