The Three Kings
If you had been a child in Provence when Mistral was a boy, you might perhaps have joined the excited party of curly-headed boys and fair-haired girls in hoods and clacking wooden shoes who went with him to meet the Three Kings, the Wise Men from the East, coming to worship the Holy Child on the night before Epiphany. Mistral told of it long afterwards in this way:—
With hearts beating and eyes bright we started forth on the road to Arles, bearing our gifts of welcome, cakes for the Kings, figs for the boy pages, sweet hay for the tired camels. The wind blew cold, the robin and wren hopped shivering in the branches of the leafless trees. The fields were empty except for perhaps an old woman picking up sticks, or a ragged snail-gatherer under the hedge.
“Where are you going so late, my little ones?” some one would ask.
“We go to meet the Kings,” we said, singing and laughing, sliding and running along the white, wind-swept road. But the daylight faded, the black, pointed cypress trees hid the bell-tower of Maillane, and the long, white road stretched away empty.... Then we met a shepherd, his long, brown cloak held tight around him.
“Have you seen the Kings? Are they still a long way off?”
“Ah! the Kings! You should see them soon. They are not so far away.”
Then we set off running again, with our gifts for the Kings and the pages, and handfuls of hay for the camels. The bravest of us flagged a little as a great cloud over the mountain hid the sun, when suddenly a flash of golden splendor and a glory of yellow and crimson shone just where the white road curved from behind the mountain.
“The Kings! The Kings! See their mantles! See the banners! They are coming.”
And so we stood amazed; but instead of growing brighter as if the Kings were coming nearer, the glory faded with the sunset and we found ourselves alone in the dark highway.
“Which way did the Kings go?”
“They have gone behind the mountain.”
BouguereauADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
BouguereauADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
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.
“Which way did they go, the Kings?”
“Behind the mountain.”