The night before Christmas the schoolmaster was to take all of his pupils to church, and bring them back to their homes.  As the winter was very severe that year, and as for several days a great quantity of snow had fallen, the children came to the master’s house warmly wrapped and bundled up, with fur caps pulled down over their ears, double and triple jackets, knitted gloves and mittens, and good, thick-nailed boots with strong soles.  Only little Wolff came shivering in the clothes that he wore week-days and Sundays, and with nothing on his feet but coarse Strasbourg socks and heavy sabots, or wooden shoes.

His thoughtless comrades made a thousand jests over his forlorn looks and his peasant’s dress; but little Wolff was so occupied in blowing on his fingers to keep them warm, that he took no notice of the boys or what they said.

The troop of boys, with their master at their head, started for the church.  As they went they talked of the fine suppers that were waiting them at home.  The son of the burgomaster had seen, before he went out, a monstrous goose that the truffles marked with black spots like a leopard.  At the house of one of the boys there was a little fir tree in a wooden box, from whose branches hung oranges, sweetmeats and toys.

The children spoke, too, of what the Christ-child would bring to them, and what he would put in their shoes, which they would, of course, be very careful to leave in the chimney before going to bed.  And the eyes of those little boys, lively as a parcel of mice, sparkled in advance with the joy of seeing in their imagination pink paper bags filled with cakes, lead soldiers drawn up in battalions in their boxes, menageries smelling of varnished wood, and magnificent jumping-jacks covered with purple and bells.

Little Wolff knew very well by experience that his old aunt would send him supperless to bed; but, knowing that all the year he had been as good and industrious as possible, he hoped that the Christ-child would not forget him, and he, too, looked eagerly forward to putting his wooden shoes in the ashes of the fireplace.

When the service was ended, every one went away, anxious for his supper, and the band of children, walking two by two after their teacher, left the church.

In the porch, sitting on a stone seat under a Gothic niche, a child was sleeping—­a child who was clad in a robe of white linen, and whose feet were bare, notwithstanding the cold.  He was not a beggar, for his robe was new and fresh, and near him on the ground was seen a square, a hatchet, a pair of compasses, and the other tools of a carpenter’s apprentice.  Under the light of the stars, his face bore an expression of divine sweetness, and his long locks of golden hair seemed like an aureole about his head.  But the child’s feet, blue in the cold of that December night, were sad to see.

The children, so well clothed and shod for the winter, passed heedlessly before the unknown child.  One of them, the son of one of the principal men in the village, looked at the waif with an expression in which no pity could be seen.