attendant
host of quite impossible people and beasts and birds.

The laying of the yule-log followed; a ceremony so grave that it has all
the dignity of, and really is, a religious rite. The buzz of talk died
away into silence as Elizo's father, the oldest man, took by the hand
and led out into the court-yard where the log was lying his
great-grandson, the little Tounin, the youngest child: it being the rule
that the nominal bearers of the _cacho-fio_ to the hearth shall be the
oldest and the youngest of the family--the one personifying the year
that is dying, the other the year new-born. Sometimes, and this is the
prettiest rendering of the custom, the two are an old, old man and a
baby carried in its mother's arms--while between them the real bearers
of the burden walk.

In our case the log actually was carried by Marius and Esperit; but the
tottering old man clasped its forward end with his thin feeble hands,
and its hinder end was clasped by the plump feeble hands of the
tottering child. Thus, the four together, they brought it in through the
doorway and carried it thrice around the room, circling the supper-table
and the lighted candles; and then, reverently, it was laid before the
fire-place--that still sometimes is called in Provencal the _lar_.

[Illustration: ELIZO'S OLD FATHER]

There was a pause, while the old man filled out a cup of _vin cue_; and
a solemn hush fell upon the company, and all heads were bowed, as he
poured three libations upon the log, saying with the last: "In the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!"--and then cried
with all the vigor that he could infuse into his thin and quavering old
voice:

Cacho-fio,
Bouto-fio!
Alegre! Alegre!
Dieu nous alegre!
Calendo ven! Tout ben ven!
Dieu nous fague la graci de veire l'an que ven,
E se noun sian pas mai, que noun fuguen pas mens!

Yule-log,
Catch fire!
Joy! Joy!
God gives us joy!
Christmas comes! All good comes!
May God give us grace to see the coming year,
And if we are not more, may we not be less!

As he ended his invocation he crossed himself, as did all the rest; and
a great glad shout was raised of "Alegre! Alegre!" as Marius and
Esperit--first casting some fagots of vine-branches on the bed of
glowing coals--placed the yule-log upon t