The Christmas Kalends of Provence

ain that was wholly of a poetic cast. This was the making of the crèche: a representation with odd little figures and accessories of the personages and sc

s we were returning from one of our walks, we fell in with all the farm children coming homeward from the mountains laden with crèche-making material: mosses, lichens, laurel

ce he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate upon what might happen were I to meet one of his major propositions with a flat denial! But an attack in flank, I find-the sudd

raphic 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 crèche had its origin in Italy in his period, and in the same conditions which formed

on 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

wooden or pasteboard representation of the inn; and beside the inn is the stable: an open shed in which are grouped little figures representing the several personages of the Nativity. In the centre is the Christ-Child, either in a cradle or lying on a truss of straw; seated beside him is the Virgin; Saint Joseph stands near, holding in his hand the mystic lily; with their heads bent down over the Child are the ox and the ass-for those good animals helped with their breath through that cold night to keep him warm. In the foreground are the two

ries the delicate imagination of the Proven?al poets and the cruder, but still poetic, fancy of the Proven?al people have be

s-no?ls, or nouvé as they are called in Proven?al-in which new subordinate characters have been created in a spirit of frank realism, and these have materialized in new figures surrounding the crèche. At t

r her breast to the new-born (in accordance with the beautiful custom still in force in Provence) that its own mother may rest a little before she begins to suckle it; or that of

s, ostriches, and even crocodiles! The Proven?aux being from of old mighty hunters (the tradition has found its classic embodiment in Tartarin), and hill-sides being appropriate to hunting, a figure of a fowler with a gun at his shoulder has been introduced; and as it is well, even in the case of a Proven?al sportsman, to point a gun at a definite object, the fowler usually is so placed as to aim at the cock on the stable roof. He is a modern, yet not very recent addition, the fowler, as is shown by the fact that he carries a flint-lock fowling-piece. Drumming and fifing being absolute essentials to every sort of Proven?al festivity, a conspicuous figure always is found playing on a tambourin and galoubet. Itinerant knife-grinders are an old institution here, and in some obscure way-possibly because of their thievish propensities-are associated intimately with the devi

pipe to Saint Joseph; but all of these which I have named have come to be now quite as necessary to a properly made crèche as are the few which

being from two to three feet high-and in quality of all degrees: ranging downward from real magnificence (such as may be seen in the seventeenth-century Neapolitan crèche in Room V. of the Musée de Cluny) to the rough little clay figures two or three inches high in common h

he Vieux Port. The figures sell for the merest trifle, the cheapest for one or two sous, yet the Santoun Fair-held annually in December in booths set up in the Cour-du-Chapitre and in the Allée-des-Capucins-is of a real commercial importance; and is also-wh