from the
shop, in one corner of which the creche was set up. It was the little
Joachim whose right it was, because he was the youngest, the purest, to
carry the figure. A formal procession was made. He walked at its head, a
little chap with long curling golden hair, between his two grandfathers;
the rest followed in the order of their age and rank: his two
grandmothers, his father and mother, Monsieur Auguste (a dashing blade
of a young baker then) with the maid-servant, and the apprentices last
of all. A single candle was carried by one of his grandfathers into the
dark room--the illumination of which, that night, could come only from
the new fire kindled before the creche. Precisely at midnight--at the
moment when all the clocks of Aix striking together let loose the
Christmas chimes--the child laid the holy figure in the manger, and then
the candles instantly were set ablaze.

Sometimes there would be a thrilling pause of half a minute or more
while they waited for the bells: the child, with the image in his hands,
standing before the creche in the little circle of light; the others
grouped behind him, and for the most part lost in dark shadow cast by
the single candle held low down; those nearest to the creche holding
matches ready to strike so that all the candles might be lighted at once
when the moment came. And then all the bells together would send their
voices out over the city heavenward; and his mother would say softly,
"Now, my little son!"; and the room would flash into brightness
suddenly--as though a glory radiated from the Christ-Child lying there
in the manger between the ox and the ass.

Every evening throughout the Christmas season the candles were relighted
before this Christmas shrine, and there the members of the family said
in common their evening prayer; and when the time came for taking down
the creche those parts of it which were not preserved for the ensuing
year--the refuse scraps of wood and pasteboard and moss and laurel--were
burned (this is the orthodox general custom) with something of the
flavour of a rite; not cast into the household fire nor the bakery oven,
but saved from falling into base places by being consumed in a pure fire
of its own.

XII

While our own more orthodox yule-log ceremonial was in progress, the
good Elizo and Janetoun--upon whom the responsibility of the supper
rested--evidently were a prey to anxious thoughts. They whispered
together and cast uneasy glan