eturned. I think, but I am
not sure, that it was Roumanille's noel telling of the widowed mother
who carried the cradle of her own baby to the Virgin, that the
Christ-Child might not lie on straw. One by one the other voices took
up the strain, until in a full chorus the sorrowingly compassionate
melody went thrilling through the moonlit silence of the night.

And so, singing, we walked by the white way onward; hearing as we neared
the town the songs of other companies coming up, as ours was, from
outlying farms. And when they and we had passed in through the
gateways--where the townsfolk of old lashed out against their robber
Infidel and robber Christian enemies--all the black little narrow
streets were filled with an undertone of murmuring voices and an
overtone of clear sweet song.

XVI

On the little Grande Place the crowd was packed densely. There the
several streams of humanity pouring into the town met and mingled; and
thence in a strong current flowed onward into the church. Coming from
the blackness without--for the tall houses surrounding the Grande Place
cut off the moonlight and made it a little pocket of darkness--it was
with a shock of splendour that we encountered the brightness within. All
the side-altars were blazing with candles; and as the service went on,
and the high-altar also flamed up, the whole building was filled with a
soft radiance--save that strange luminous shadows lingered in the lofty
vaulting of the nave.

After the high-altar, the most brilliant spot was the altar of Saint
Joseph, in the west transept; beside which was a magnificent creche--the
figures half life-size, beautifully modelled, and richly clothed. But
there was nothing whimsical about this creche: the group might have
been, and very possibly had been, composed after a well-painted
"Nativity" by some artist of the late Renaissance.

The mass was the customary office; but at the Offertory it was
interrupted by a ceremony that gave it suddenly an entirely Mediaeval
cast: of which I felt more fully the beauty, and the strangeness in our
time, because the Vidame sedulously had guarded against my having
knowledge of it in advance. This was nothing less than a living
rendering of the Adoration of the Shepherds: done with a simplicity to
make one fancy the figures in Ghirlandojo's picture were alive again and
stirred by the very spirit that animated them when they were set on
canvas four hundred years ago.

By some means o