true legend of Dom Balaguere as it is related
in the olive country. At the present time the chateau of Trinquelague
no longer exists, but the chapel still stands on the top of Mount
Ventoux, amid a cluster of green oaks. Its decayed door rattles in the
wind, and its threshold is choked up with vegetation; there are birds'
nests at the corners of the altar, and in the recesses of the lofty
windows, from which the stained glass has long ago disappeared. It
seems, however, that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light
wanders amid these ruins, and the peasants, in going to the masses and
to the midnight repasts, see this phantom of a chapel illuminated by
invisible tapers that burn in the open air, even in snow and wind. You
may laugh at it if you like, but a vine-dresser of the place, named
Garrigue, doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, declared to me that one
Christmas night, when he was a little tipsy, he lost his way on the
hill of Trinquelague; and this is what he saw.... Till eleven
o'clock, nothing. All was silent, motionless, inanimate. Suddenly,
about midnight, a chime sounded from the top of the steeple, an old,
old chime, which seemed as if it were ten leagues off. Very soon
Garrigue saw lights flitting about, and uncertain shadows moving in
the road that climbs the hill. They passed on beneath the chapel
porch, and murmured:

"Good evening, Master Arnoton!"

"Good evening, good evening, my friends!" ...

When all had entered, my vine-dresser, who was very courageous,
silently approached, and when he looked through the broken door, a
singular spectacle met his gaze. All those he had seen pass were
seated round the choir, and in the ruined nave, just as if the old
seats still existed. Fine ladies in brocade, with lace head-dresses;
lords adorned from head to foot; peasants in flowered jackets such as
our grandfathers had; all with an old, faded, dusty, tired look. From
time to time the night birds, the usual inhabitants of the chapel, who
were aroused by all these lights, would come and flit round the
tapers, the flames of which rose straight and ill-defined, as if they
were burning behind a veil; and what amused Garrigue very much was a
certain personage with large steel spectacles, who was ever shaking
his tall black wig, in which one of these birds was quite entangled,
and kept itself upright by noiselessly flapping its wings....

At the farther end, a little old man of childish figure was on his
knee