The Christmas Kalends of Provence

logical matters, that I kept the Vidame from falling again a-fuming-while we waited through the

ith a formal severity. The library being our usual habitat, I inferred that our change of quarters was in honour of the day. It was much to my liking; for in that antiquely ordered room-and the presence of the Vidame helped the illusion-I felt always as though I had stepped backward into the thick of e

so plumply provoking and charming in her Arlesian dress that I will not say what did or did not happen in the darkness as we passed the well! A little in our rear followed the house-servants, even to the least; and in the Mazet already were gathered, with

me from the whole company at once. As for the Vidame, he so radiated cordiality that he seemed to be the veritable Spirit of Christmas (incarnate at the age of sixty, and at that period of

ird of the rear wall was taken up by the huge fire-place, that measured ten feet across and seven feet from the stone mantle-shelf to the floor. In its centre, with room on each side in the chimney-corners for a chair (a space often occupied by large lockers for flour and salt), was the fire-bed-crossed by a pair of tall andirons, which flared out at the top into little iron baskets (often used, with a filling of live coals, as plate-warmers) and which were furnished with hooks at different heights to support the roasting-spits. Hanging from the mantle-shelf was a short curtai

and carving and polished iron-work, were a tall buffet and a tall clock-the clock of so insistent a temperament that it struck in duplicate, at an interval of a minute, the number of each hour. A small table stood in a corner, and in ordinary times the big dining-table was ranged along one of the walls, with benches on each side of it supplemented by rush-bottomed chairs. Near the bread-trough was hung a long-armed steel-balance with a brass dish suspended b

ovision in the room for bodily ease or comfort: a lack unperceived by its occupants, but which an A