And the whole matter would be gone through all over again from the beginning, and Jaume Deydier would lose his temper and say harsh things which he regretted as soon as they had crossed his lips, and Margaï would continue to argue and to exasperate him, until, luckily, Nicolette would come into the room and perch on her father’s knee, and smother further arguments by ruffling up his hair, or putting his necktie straight, or merely throwing her arms around his neck.
This all occurred two days before Christmas. There had been a fall of snow way up in the mountains, and Luberon wore a white cap upon his crest. The mistral had come once or twice tearing down the valley, and in the living-rooms at the mas huge fires of olive and eucalyptus burned in the hearths. Margaï had been very busy preparing the food for the gros soupé, the traditional banquet of Christmas Eve in old Provence, and which Jaume Deydier offered every year to forty of his chief employés. Nicolette now was also versed in the baking and roasting of the calènos, the fruits and cakes which would be distributed to all the men employed at the farm and to their families: and even Margaï was forced to admit that the Poumpo taillado—the national cake, baked with sugar and oil—was never so good as when Nicolette mixed it herself.
Of Ameyric Barnadou there was less and less talk as the festival drew nigh. Margaï and Nicolette were too busy to argue, and Jaume Deydier sat by his fireside in somewhat surly silence. He could not understand his own daughter. Ah ça! what did the child want? What had she to say against young Barnadou? Every girl had to marry some time, then why not Nicolette?
But he said nothing more for a day or two. His pet scheme that the fiançailles should be celebrated on Christmas Eve had been knocked on the head by Nicolette’s obstinacy, but Jaume hoped a great deal from the banquet, the calignaou, and above all, from the midnight Mass. Nicolette was very gentle and very sentimental, and Ameyric so very passionately in love. The boy would be a fool if he could not make the festivals, the procession, the flowers, the candles, the incense to be his helpmates in his wooing.
On Christmas Eve Jaume Deydier’s guests were assembled in the hall where the banquet was also laid: the more important overseers and workpeople of his olive oil and orange-flower water factories were there, some with their wives and children.
Jaume Deydier, in the beautiful bottle-green cloth coat which he had worn at his wedding, and which he wore once every year for the Christmas festival, his grey hair and his whiskers carefully brushed, his best paste buckles on his shoes, shook every one cordially by the hand; beside him Nicolette, in silk kirtle and lace fichu, smiled and chatted, proud to be the châtelaine of this beautiful home, the queen of this little kingdom amongst the mountains, the beneficent fairy to whom the whole country-side looked if help or comfort or material assistance was required. Around her pressed the men and the women and the children who had come to the feast. There was old Tiberge, the doyen of the staff over at Pertuis, whose age had ceased to be recorded, it had become fabulous: there was Thibaut, the chief overseer, with his young wife who had her youngest born by the hand. There was Zacharie, the chief clerk, who was tokened to Violante, the daughter of Laugier the cashier. They were all a big family together: had seen one another grow up, marry, have children, and their children had known one another from their cradles. Jaume Deydier amongst them was like the head of the family, and no seigneur over at the château had ever been so conscious of his own dignity. As for Nicolette, she was just the little fairy whom they had seen growing from a lovely child into an exquisite woman, their Nicolette, of whom every girl was proud, and with whom every lad was in love.
The noise in the hall soon became deafening. They are neither a cold nor a reserved race, these warm-hearted children of sunny Provence. They carry their hearts on their sleeves: they talk at the top of their voices, and when they laugh they shake the old rafters of their mountain homes with the noise. And Christmas Eve was the day of all days. They all loved the gifts of the calènos, the dried fruits and cakes which the patron distributed with a lavish hand, and which they took home to their bairns or to those less fortunate members of their families who were not partakers of Deydier’s hospitality. But they adored the Poumpo taillado, the sweet, oily cake that no one baked better than demoiselle Nicolette. And the banquet would begin with bouillabaisse which was concocted by Margaï from an old recipe that came direct from Marseilles, and there would be turkeys and geese from Deydier’s splendid farmyard, and salads and artichokes served with marrow fat. Already the men were smacking their lips; manners not being over-refined in Provence, where Nature alone dictates how a man shall behave, without reference to what his neighbours might think. There was a cheery fire, too, in the monumental hearth, and the shutters behind the windows being hermetically closed, the atmosphere presently became steaming and heady with the smell of good food and the aroma from the huge, long-necked bottles of good Roussillon wine.
But every one there knew that, before they could sit down to table, the solemn rite of the Calignaou must be gone through. As soon as the huge clock that stood upon the mantelshelf had finished striking six, old Tiberge, whose first birthday was lost in the nebulæ of time, stepped out from the little group that encircled him, and took tiny Savinien, the four-year-old son of the chief overseer, by the hand: December leading January, Winter coupled with Spring; Jaume Deydier put a full bumper of red wine in the little fellow’s podgy hand: and together these two, the aged and the youngster, toddled with uncertain steps out of the room, followed by the entire party. They made their way to the entrance door of the house, on the threshold of which a huge log of olive wood had in the meanwhile been placed. Guided by his mother, little Savinien now poured some of the wine over the log, whilst, prompted by Nicolette, his baby lips lisped the traditional words:
“Alègre, Diou nous alègre
Cachofué ven, tout ben ven