Part 13

A certain stir and bustle in the street evidently portended some important event. Spectators, market-women; workmen and bloused peasants, homeward bound with baskets emptied of eggs, chickens and shapeless lumps of butter, began to congregate, mingling with some score or so of that minor bourgeoisie that lives frugally on its modest income and having overmuch leisure is greedy for a sight of any street spectacle. There were idle troopers too belonging to the cavalry, whose trumpets rang out shrilly ever and anon from the barracks hard by; while a milk-woman on her rounds, with glittering brass cans in the little green cart that her sturdy mastiff with his brass-studded harness and red worsted tassels drew so easily, forgot her customers as she secured for herself a place in the foremost rank. Then children suddenly appeared, basket-laden, strewing the street with flowers and cut fragments of colored paper until the rough paving-stones all but disappeared beneath an irregular mosaic of red and green and blue. The bells of neighboring churches sent forth with common accord a joyous peal which was echoed by those of a monastery on the farther side of my hotel, and through the gate of which I had often seen the poor--such beggars as Sterne depicted--going in for their daily dole of bread and soup. From afar came the boom and clang of music, blended with the deep rich notes of chanting, as the head of a procession came in sight.

It was difficult to believe that the town could have contained so many girls--young, well dressed and pretty, as had been, by ecclesiastical influence, or by social considerations, induced to walk in that procession. They were of all ages, from the lisping child ill at ease in her starched frock and white shoes, to the tall maiden, carrying a heavy flag with the air of a Joan of Arc; but there they were--squadrons of girls in white; bevies of girls in blue; companies of girls in pink or lilac or maize color; all either actually bearing some emblem or badge, or feigning to assist the progress of some shrine or reliquary, or colossal crucifix, or group of images, by grasping the end of one of the hundreds of bright ribbons that were attached to these the central features and rallying points of the show. On, on they streamed, walking demurely to the musical bassoon and serpent cornet and drum, of clashing cymbal and piping clarionet, while the musicians, collected from many a parish of city and suburbs, beat and blew their best. Anon the music was hushed, and nothing broke the silence save the deep voices of the chanting priests, and then arose the shrill singing of many children as school after school, well drilled and officered by nuns or friars, as the case might be,--marched on to swell the apparently interminable array.

A marvellous effect was there of color and grouping, and a rare display too of treasures ecclesiastic that seldom see the light of day. There is nothing now in the market, were an empress the bidder, to equal that old point lace just drawn forth from the oaken chest in which it usually reposes, and which was the pious work of supple fingers that crumbled to dust two centuries ago. Where can you find such goldsmith's work as yonder casket, that in bygone ages was consecrated as the receptacle of some wonder-working relic; or see such a triumph of art as that jewelled chalice, the repoussé work of which was surely wrought by fairy hammers, so light and delicate is the tracery?

... On, and onwards still, as if the whole feminine population of the kingdom--between the ages of seven, say, and seven-and-twenty--had been pressed into the service, swept the procession. Fresh bands of music, new companies of chanting priests, of deep-voiced deacons whose scarlet robes were all but hidden by costly lace, awakened the echoes of the quiet streets. Chariots with bleeding hearts conspicuously borne aloft; chariots with gigantic crucifixes; chariots resplendent as the sun, with lavish display of cloth of gold, and tenanted by venerated images, went lumbering by.

And still the children sang and the diapason of the chanting rolled out like solemn thunder on the air, while at every instant some novel feature of the ever varying spectacle claimed its meed of praise. Prettiest, perhaps, of all the sights there was a little--a very little--child, a beautiful boy with golden curls, fantastically clad in raiment of camel's hair, who carried a tiny cross and led by a blue ribbon a white lamb, highly trained, no doubt, since it followed with perfect docility and exemplary meekness. A more charming model of innocent infancy than this youthful representative of John the Baptist, as with filleted head, small limbs seemingly bare, and blue eyes that never wandered to the right or left, he slowly stepped on, none of the great Italian masters ever drew....

The spectators, I noticed, behaved very variously. There were _esprit forts_ clearly among the bourgeoisie looking on, who seemed coldly indifferent to what they saw, if not actually hostile, and who declined to doff their hats as the holiest images and the most hallowed emblems were borne by. But the peasants one and all bared their heads in reverence; and the milk-woman, with her cart and her cans, had pulled her rosary, with its dark beads and brass medals, out of her capacious pocket and was telling her beads as devoutly as her own great-grandmother could have done.

Some rivalry there may possibly have been between the different parishes which had sent forth their boys and girls, their bands and flags, and the jealously guarded treasures from crypt and chancel and sacristy to swell the pomp--Saint Jossé, with its famed old church, to which pilgrims resort even from the banks of Loire and Rhine, could not permit itself to be outshone by fashionable Saint Jacques, where it is easy for a bland abbé, who knows the world of the salons, to collect subscriptions that are less missed by the givers than a lost bet on the races, or a luckless stake at baccarat. And Saint Ursula, grim patroness of a network of ancient streets, where aristocratic mansions of the mediæval type are elbowed by mean shops and hucksters' stalls, yet tries to avoid the disgrace of being overcrowded by moneyed, pushing parvenu All Saints, where tall new houses, radiant with terra cotta and plate glass, shelter the rich proprietors of the still taller brick chimneys that dominate a mass of workmen's dwellings on the outskirts of the parish. But such a spirit of emulation only serves to enhance the glitter of the show.

And now the clashing cymbals, and the boom and bray of the brass instruments lately at their loudest, are hushed, that the rich thunder of the chanting may be the better heard, and the spectators press forward, or stand on tiptoe, to peer over the shoulders of those in the foremost rank. Something was plainly to be looked for that was regarded as the central pivot, or kernel, of the show. And here it comes,--surrounded by chanting priests, and preceded by scarlet capped and white robed acolytes swinging weighty censers, under his canopy of state borne over his head by four stronger men, some dignitary of the Church goes by. He wears no mitre--not even that of a bishop _in partibus infidelium_--and therefore I conjecture him to be a dean. He is at any rate splendid as jewels, and gold embroideries, and antique lace can make him; and he walks beneath his gorgeous baldaquin of gold and purple, chanting too, but in a thin reedy voice, for he is old, and his hair, silver white, contrasts somewhat plaintively with the magnificence that environs him as amidst clouds of steaming incense he totters on. The bystanders begin to disperse, for it is getting late and cold, and the shadows are beginning to creep from darkling nooks and corners, and the spectacle is over. The procession is out of sight, and fainter grow the sounds of the music and of the chanting. The last spectator to depart was a young monk, with a pale face and dreamy eyes, clad in the brown robes of his order, who during all this time had knelt on the cold stones at the monastery gate, his lips moving as his lean fingers grasped his rosary, and an expression of rapt devotion on his wan countenance, that would have done credit to some hermit saint of a thousand years ago when the crown of martyrdom was easy to find.

From _All the Year Round_

Christmas at the Cape

Your Christmas comes with holly leaves And snow about your doors and eaves; Our lighted windows, open wide, Let in our summer Christmas tide; And where the drifting moths may go-- Behold our tiny flakes of snow;

But carol, carol in the cold; And carol, carol as ye may,-- We sing the merry songs of old As merrily on Christmas Day.

Your hills are wrapped in rainy cloud, Your sea in anger roars aloud; But here our hills are veiled with haze In harmonies of blues and grays; The waters of two oceans meet With friendly murmurs by our feet;

But carol, carol, Christmas Waits, And carol, carol, as ye may,-- The Crickets by our doors and gates Sing in the grace of Christmas Day.

The rain and sunshine of the Cape Lie folded in the ripening grape, And Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, With bounteous orchard, field of vine, And every spot that we pass by-- Lie burnished 'neath our Christmas sky;

So carol, carol in your snow And carol, carol as ye may,-- We carol 'mid our blooms ablow, The grace of Summer's Christmas Day.

JOHN RUNCIE

The "Good Night" in Spain

Who is he that has seen a Nativity and has not felt it? Who has not found himself in his own home, in his own domain, there in that fantastic world of cork and gummed paper, with its shadowy caves, where a saintly anchorite prays before a crucifix--sweet and simple anachronism, like that of the hunter who in a thicket of rosemary shrubs aims his gun at a partridge large as a stork perched on the tower of a hermitage, or that of the smuggler with his Spanish cloak and slouch hat, who with a load of tobacco hides behind a paper rock to give free passage to the three kings journeying in all their glory along the lofty summits of those cork Alps? Who does not feel an inexplicable pleasure at seeing that little donkey, laden with firewood, passing over a proud bridge of paper stone? And that meadow of milled green baize in which feed so tranquilly those little white lambs! Does not that hoar frost so well imitated with steel filings turn you cold? Do you not take comfort in the heat of that ruddy bonfire which the shepherds are kindling to warm the Holy Child? Who is not startled to discover, under the strips of glass which represent so well a frozen river, the fish, the tortoises, the crabs, reposing with all ease upon a bed of golden sand and swollen to dimensions unknown to naturalists? Here is a crab under whose claws can pass an eel, his neighbor, as under the arch of a bridge. Here is a colossal rat regarding with a bullying air a diminutive and peaceful kitten. Over yonder a donkey is disputing with a rabbit about the respective magnificence of their ears, which are, in fact, of the same size, and a bull is holding a similar discussion, on the subject of horns, with a snail, while a stout duck refuses to yield the honors to a rickety swan. And these birds of all colors, gladdening that profound forest of little evergreens which forms the background of this enchanting scene, would you not think that they had gathered here from the four quarters of the earth? Does it not make you happy to see the shepherds dance? And, above all, do you not adore with tender reverence the Divine Mystery contained in that humble porch with its thatch of straw and, in its depths, a halo or glory of light? I say it frankly,--on that holy and merry Christmas Eve, all these things seem to me to live and feel; these little figures of clay, shaped by clumsy hands, placed there with such faith and such devotion, seem to me to receive breath and being from the joy and enthusiasm that reign. The star which guides the Magi, tinsel and glass though it is, seems to me to shine and shoot forth rays. The aureole surrounding the manger where the Holy Child is lying seems to glow not as a transparency with candles placed behind it, but with a reflection of celestial light. The tambourines and drums and songs give out melodies as simple and as pleasing as if they were echoes of those heard by the shepherds on that first blest Christmas Eve.

Could there be a festival more joyous, more natural, more tender in appeal and at the same time more exalted in significance--the birth of the Child in the rude stable, with only shepherds to wish him joy; innocence, poverty, simplicity, the very foundations of the magnificent structure of Christianity? Well may children and the poor keep a merry Christmas. They bring to God the gifts which please him best,--purity, faith and love. O, night, well called in Spain "The Good Night," blither than the carnival and holy as Holy Week itself!

From _Holy Night_, by FERNAN CABALLERO. Translated by Katharine Lee Bates

Christmas in Rome

What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep the feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I stood one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence....

The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome by Siena, still and brown, uplifted mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling plain; by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown people; through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock, Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian heights, from which one looks across the broad Lake of Bolsena and the Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day in late September, shone upon the landscape, and I thought--Can this be Christmas? Are they bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns in far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the tramp of heels upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy, with a round red sun and cries of warning at the corners of the streets?

I reached Rome on Christmas-eve in time to hear midnight services in the Sistine Chapel and St. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of decayed shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen, who made a mockery of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the dress devised by Michael Angelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals these words, and these only--"Sæcula Sæculorum, amen." Such was the celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very strange did Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Prophets appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and unmeaning crowd.

Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie and repaired, with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and of Englishwomen in black crape (the regulation costume), to St. Peter's. It was a glorious and cloudless morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from the southern windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and a mingled mass of every kind of people. Up the nave stood double files of the pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss cuirassiers and halberds. _Contadini_ crowded round the sacred images, and especially round the toe of St. Peter. I saw many mothers lift their swaddled babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with the invariable red umbrellas, hung about side chapels and sacristies. Purple-mantled _monsignori_, like emperor butterflies, floated down the aisles from sunlight into shadow. Movement, color, and the stir of expectation made the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard, were admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked up towards the dome. There, under its broad canopy, stood the altar, glittering with gold and candles. The choir was carpeted and hung with scarlet. Two magnificent thrones rose ready for the Pope. Guards of honor, soldiers, attachés, and the élite of the residents and visitors in Rome were scattered in groups, picturesquely varied by ecclesiastics of all orders and degrees. At ten a stirring took place near the great west door. It opened, and we saw a procession of the Pope and his cardinals. Before him marched the singers and the blowers of the silver trumpets, making the most liquid melody. Then came his Cap of Maintenance and three tiaras; then a company of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last, aloft beneath a canopy upon the shoulders of men, and flanked by the mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and fro like a Lama or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most silverly, and still the people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had his blessing. Then he took his state and received homage. After this the choir began to sing a mass of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed the Pope. Marvellous putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras and mitres ensued, during which there was much bowing and praying and burning of incense. At last, when he had reached the highest stage of sacrificial sanctity, he proceeded to the altar, waited on by cardinals and bishops. Having censed it carefully, he took a higher throne and divested himself of part of his robes. Then the mass went on in earnest till the moment of consecration, when it paused, the Pope descended from his throne, passed down the choir, and reached the altar. Every one knelt; the shrill bell tinkled; the silver trumpets blew; the air became sick and heavy with incense, so that sun and candle-light swooned in an atmosphere of odorous cloud-wreaths. The whole church trembled, hearing the strange subtle music vibrate in the dome, and seeing the Pope with his own hands lift Christ's body from the altar and present it to the people. An old parish priest, pilgrim from some valley of the Apennines, who knelt beside me, cried and quivered with excess of adoration. The great tombs around, the sculptured saints and angels, the dome, the volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar melody, the hierarchy ministrant, the white and central figure of the Pope, the multitude, made up an overpowering scene.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

Christmas in Burgundy

Every year at the approach of Advent, people refresh their memories, clear their throats, and begin preluding, in the long evenings by the fireside, those carols whose invariable and eternal theme is the coming of the Messiah. They take from old closets pamphlets, little collections begrimed with dust and smoke, to which the press, and sometimes the pen, has consigned these songs; and as soon as the first Sunday of Advent sounds, they gossip, they gad about, they sit together by the fireside, sometimes at one house, sometimes at another, taking turns in paying for the chestnuts and white wine, but singing with one common voice the grotesque praises of the _Little Jesus_. There are very few villages even, which, during all the evenings of Advent, do not hear some of these curious canticles shouted in their streets, to the nasal drone of bagpipes. In this case the minstrel comes as a reinforcement to the singers at the fireside; he brings and adds his dose of joy (spontaneous or mercenary, it matters little which) to the joy which breathes around the hearth-stone; and when the voices vibrate and resound, one voice more is always welcome. There, it is not the purity of the notes which makes the concert, but the quantity,--_non qualitas, sed quantitas_; then (to finish at once with the minstrel) when the Saviour has at length been born in the manger, and the beautiful Christmas Eve is passed, the rustic piper makes his round among the houses, where every one compliments and thanks him, and, moreover, gives him in small coin the price of the shrill notes with which he has enlivened the evening entertainments.