Christmas Eve came. Family friends dropped in. The Yule-log was set on the fire with shouts and singing. “Oh that I could see these kind faces!” moaned Cristobal. “No doubt, Jasper’s chestnuts are popping merrily; and his shoes will be full of presents. And here am I! My head aches, and my eye-balls burn.”
He stole out of the room, and, throwing himself on a wicker bench, mused over his troubles in solitude. One might have supposed him sleeping; for how should one imagine that his beautiful eyes were of no manner of use, except when they were closed? When Cristobal said, “Let me see,” he dropped his eye-lids; and what he saw then, no artist can paint.
On this night, a beautiful child appeared before him, as like the picture of the Little Jesus as if it had stepped out of its frame on the church-wall. Even the crimson and blue tints of the old painting were faithfully preserved; and every fold of the soft drapery was the very same.
“I saw you, Cristobal, when you came before me with your colored candle, one year ago.”
“I knew it, I knew it!” cried Cristobal, clasping his hands in awe. “I saw your eyes follow me; and I never once turned but you were looking. They told me it was only a picture; but I said for that very reason your eyes were sorrowful,—you longed to be alive.”
The child replied by a slight motion of the head; and the aureola trembled like sunlight on the water. The longer Cristobal gazed, the more courage he gathered. “Lovely vision,” said he, “if vision you may be,—I have said to myself, I would gladly walk to Rome with peas in my shoes, if I could know what you wished to say to me that Christmas night.”
“Only this, little brother: Are you ready for Christmas?”
“Alas! no: I never am. I have only two sous in the world.”
“Poor Cristobal! Yet, without a centime, one may be ready for Christmas.”
“But I am so very unhappy!”