For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
Rudyard Kipling
By permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen & Co.
A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession
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.