so openly that they were as a brace of
comets--bustling violently through our universe and dragging into their
erratic wakes, away from normal orbits, the whole planetary system of
the household and all the haply intrusive stars.

With my morning coffee came the explanation of a quite impossible smell
of frying dough-nuts which had puzzled me on the preceding day: a
magnificent golden-brown _fougasso_, so perfect of its kind that any
Provencal of that region--though he had come upon it in the sandy wastes
of Sahara--would have known that its creator was Mise Fougueiroun. To
compare the _fougasso_ with our homely dough-nut does it injustice. It
is a large flat open-work cake--a grating wrought in dough--an inch or
so in thickness, either plain or sweetened or salted, fried delicately
in the best olive-oil of Aix or Maussane. It is made throughout the
winter, but its making at Christmas time is of obligation; and the
custom obtains among the women--though less now than of old--of sending
a _fougasso_ as a Christmas gift to each of their intimates. As this
custom had in it something more than a touch of vainglorious emulation,
I well can understand why it has fallen into desuetude in the vicinity
of Vielmur--where Mise Fougueiroun's inspired kitchening throws all
other cook-work hopelessly into the shade. As I ate the "horns" (as its
fragments are called) of my _fougasso_ that morning, dipping them in my
coffee according to the prescribed custom, I was satisfied that it
deserved its high place in the popular esteem.

When I joined the Vidame below stairs I found him under such stress of
Christmas excitement that he actually forgot his usual morning
suggestion--made always with an off-hand freshness, as though the matter
were entirely new--that we should take a turn along the lines of the
Roman Camp. He was fidgeting back and forth between the hall (our usual
place of morning meeting) and the kitchen: torn by his conflicting
desires to attend upon me, his guest, and to take his accustomed part in
the friendly ceremony that was going on below. Presently he compromised
the divergencies of the situation, though with some hesitation, by
taking me down with him into Mise Fougueiroun's domain--where he became
frankly cheerful when he found that I was well received.

Although the morning still was young, work on the estate had been ended
for the day, and about the door of the kitchen more than a score of
labourers were gathered