ula ending
with the prayer of the yule-log that if another year there are no more,
there may be no less. It is the custom that this blessing shall be asked
by the youngest child of the family who can speak the words: a pretty
usage which sometimes makes the blessing go very queerly indeed. Our
little Tounin came to the front again in this matter, exhibiting an air
of grave responsibility which showed that he had been well drilled; and
it was with quite a saintly look on his little face that he folded his
hands together and said very earnestly: "God bless all that we are going
to eat, and if we are no less next year may we be no more!" At which
everybody looked at Janetoun and laughed.

In our seating a due order of precedence was observed. Old Jan, the head
of the family, presided, with the Vidame and myself on his right and
with Elizo's father and mother on his left; and thence the company went
downward by age and station to the foot of the table, where were grouped
the servants from the Chateau and the workmen on the farm. But no other
distinction was made. All were served alike and all drank together as
equals when the toasts were called. The servers were Elizo and Janetoun,
with Nanoun and Magali for assistants; and those four, although they
took their places at the table when each course had been brought on, had
rather a Passover time of it: for they ate as it were with their loins
girded and with full or empty dishes imminent to their hands.

The stout Nanoun--whose robust body thrills easily to superstitious
fears--was still farther handicapped in her own eating by her zealous
effort so to stuff the family cat as to give that animal no excuse for
uttering evil-portending miaus. For it is well known that should the
family cat fall to miauing on Christmas Eve, and especially while the
supper is in progress, very dreadful things surely will happen to the
family during the ensuing year. Fortunately Nanoun's preventive measures
averted this calamity; yet were they like to have overshot their mark.
Only the cat's natural abstemiousness saved her that night from dying of
a surfeit--and in agony surely provocative of the very cries which
Nanoun sought to restrain!

As I have said, the Great Supper must be "lean," and is restricted to
certain dishes which in no wise can be changed; but a rich leanness is
possible in a country where olive-oil takes the place of animal fat in
cooking, and where the accumulated skill of ag