nly a little short of a miracle, a way was opened through
the dense crowd along the centre of the nave from the door to the altar,
and up this way with their offerings real shepherds came--the quaintest
procession that anywhere I have ever seen. In the lead were four
musicians--playing upon the _tambourin_, the _galoubet_, the very small
cymbals called _palets_, and the bagpipe-like _carlamuso_--and then, two
by two, came ten shepherds: wearing the long brown full cloaks,
weather-stained and patched and mended, which seem always to have come
down through many generations and which never by any chance are new;
carrying tucked beneath their arms their battered felt hats browned,
like their cloaks, by long warfare with sun and rain; holding in one
hand a lighted candle and in the other a staff. The two leaders
dispensing with staves and candles, bore garlanded baskets; one filled
with fruit--melons, pears, apples, and grapes--and in the other a pair
of doves: which with sharp quick motions turned their heads from side to
side as they gazed wonderingly on their strange surroundings with their
bright beautiful eyes.

Following came the main offering: a spotless lamb. Most originally, and
in a way poetically, was this offering made. Drawn by a mild-faced ewe,
whose fleece had been washed to a wonder of whiteness and who was decked
out with bright-coloured ribbons in a way to unhinge with vanity her
sheepish mind, was a little two-wheeled cart--all garlanded with laurel
and holly, and bedizened with knots of ribbon and pink paper roses and
glittering little objects such as are hung on Christmas-trees in other
lands. Lying in the cart placidly, not bound and not in the least
frightened, was the dazzlingly-white lamb, decked like the ewe with
knots of ribbon and wearing about its neck a red collar brilliant to
behold. Now and then the ewe would turn to look at it, and in response
to one of those wistful maternal glances the little creature stood up
shakily on its unduly long legs and gave an anxious baa! But when a
shepherd bent over and stroked it gently, it was reassured; lying down
contentedly again in its queer little car of triumph, and thereafter
through the ceremony remaining still. Behind the car came ten more
shepherds; and in their wake a long double line of country-folk, each
with a lighted candle in hand. There is difficulty, indeed, in keeping
that part of the demonstration within bounds, because it is esteemed an
h