Bouguereau
ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
The white owls hooted, the wind was chill, and night-shadows frightened us; so close together with backward glances we hurried toward the village again. The hay we threw away, but the cakes we had brought to give the Kings and the figs for the boy pages—they were comforting. And at home our mothers asked us: “Well, did you see them?”
“Only a long way off. They went behind the mountain.”
“But what road did you take?”
“The road to Arles.”
“Ah, my poor lambs—but the Kings never come by that road. They come from the East—you should have taken the Roman road. Ah, the beautiful sight when they entered Maillane! the banners and trumpets! the pages leading the camels! But what a show! Now they are gone to the church to offer their adoration. After supper you shall go and see them.”
Suppers were swallowed quickly, mine at my grandmother’s, and then we all ran to the church. Sure enough, high above the manger hung the glittering star, and on bended knees before the Holy Child were the Three Kings—Gaspar, in a crimson cloak, with gifts of gold; Melchior, in yellow, offering incense; and Balthasar, in a mantle blue, presenting a vase of myrrh. How reverently we admired the gayly dressed pages who carried the Kings’ long trains, and the great camels whose heads and humps rose high above St. Joseph’s ass and the oxen!...
Many a time since those days I have been on the Arles road at this season when the robin and wren haunt the hawthorne hedges. The snail-gatherer still searches under the hedge and the owls hoot in the winter evening. But I see no more in the glory of the sunset clouds the banners of the Kings.