All Paris had been aroused by the tumult and now crowded around the palace gates. At last the flames burned out. The four maskers lay, a charred and writhing heap, upon the floor of the dance-hall. One was a mere cinder. Another survived until daybreak. Still another died at noon the next day. The fourth lived on through three days of agony. This was Sir Hugonin himself.
Small pity did he get from the mechanics and tradesmen of Paris!
“Bark, dog, bark!” was the cry with which they greeted the charred and mangled corpse when it was borne through the streets to its final resting place in the cemetery.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHRISTMAS TREE IN LEGEND
We have seen that most of the ceremonies that have attended or still attend the season of Christmas may be traced back to a period long before the birth of Christ.
The Christmas tree is no exception to this rule. It is pagan, not Christian in its origin, though it has been adapted to Christian uses. It came down to us from the pagan Teutons and Scandinavians, and on the way it was Christianized in Germany and Holland, in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, long before it had been made holy in the same manner among the English-speaking peoples.
Myth and history have both busied themselves with guesses at its origin. Let us begin with myth.
A very old legend makes Saint Winfred the inventor of the Christmas tree. Winfred (please note that this is the masculine form of which Winifred is the feminine) was one of the early missionaries to Norway who helped to wean the ancient Scandinavians from their pagan beliefs and practices.
He found that their priests, the Druids, had taught them to worship trees as if they were living gods. So he set himself the task of showing to his Christian converts that the objects of their former worship were not gods but trees,—trees and nothing more. On Christmas eve, therefore, he hewed down a mighty oak in presence of a great crowd of men, women and children.
A miracle indeed followed. But it was a Christian miracle, and as such was all the more convincing to these simple people that their old-time faiths had been misplaced.