For Ninette, Beppo’s mother, was a silly old sheep, and Beppo was a very young little lamb, and so they could not possibly be expected to know what a great honor had suddenly befallen them.  They did not dream that, the night before, Pere Michaud had told Felix that his Beppo (for Beppo was Felix’s very own) had been chosen by the shepherds for the “offered lamb” of the Christmas Eve procession in all its festival splendor in the great church of the village.

Of the importance of this procession in the eyes of the peasant folk I will tell you more by and by; it is enough to say now that to be the offered lamb, or indeed the offered lamb’s mother, for both always went together, was the greatest honor and glory that could possibly happen to a Provencal sheep, and so little Felix was fairly bursting with pride and delight.  And so it was, too, that he was now busying himself washing their wool, which he determined should shine like spun silver on the great night.

He tugged away, scrubbing and brushing and combing the thick fleeces, and at last, after much labor, considered their toilets done for the day; then, giving each a handful of fresh hay to nibble, he left the fold and trudged into the cottage.

“Well, little one,” said the Mise, “hast thou finished thy work?”

“Yes, mother,” answered Felix; “and I shall scrub them so each day till the holy night!  Even now Ninette is white as milk, and Beppo shines like an angel!  Ah, but I shall be proud when he rides up to the altar in his little cart!  And, mother, dost thou not really think him far handsomer than was Jean’s lamb, that stupid Nano, in the procession last year?”

“There, there,” said the Mise, “never thou mind about Jean’s lamb, but run along now and finish thy creche.”

Now, in Provence, at the time when Felix lived, no one had ever heard of such a thing as a Christmas tree; but in its stead every cottage had a “creche”; that is, in one corner of the great living-room, the room of the fireplace, the peasant children and their fathers and mothers built up on a table a mimic village of Bethlehem, with houses and people and animals, and, above all, with the manger, where the Christ Child lay.  Everyone took the greatest pains to make the creche as perfect as possible, and some even went so far as to fasten tiny angels to the rafters, so that they hovered over the toy houses like a flock of white butterflies; and sometimes a gold star, hung on a golden thread, quivered over the little manger, in memory of the wonderful star of the Magi.

In the Michaud cottage the creche was already well under way.  In the corner across from the fireplace the Pere had built up a mound, and this Felix had covered with bits of rock and tufts of grass, and little green boughs for trees, all to represent the rocky hillside of Judea; then, half-way up, he began to place the tiny houses.  These he had cut out of wood and adorned with wonderful carving, in which, indeed, he was very skilful.  And then, such figures as he had made, such quaint little men and women, such marvelous animals, camels and oxen and sheep and horses, were never before seen in Sur Varne.  But the figure on which he had lavished his utmost skill was that of the little Christ Child, which was not to be placed in the manger until Christmas night itself.