Behind St. Joseph came the girls bearing lights, their heads covered
with handkerchiefs knotted under their chins, also reciting the rosary,
but with less wrath than the boys. In their midst were to be seen
several lads dragging along little rabbits made of Japanese paper,
lighted by red candles, with their short paper tails erect. The lads
brought those toys into the procession to enliven the birth of the
Messiah. The little animals, fat and round as eggs, seemed to be so
pleased that at times they would take a leap, lose their balance, fall,
and catch fire. The owner would then hasten to extinguish such burning
enthusiasm, puffing and blowing until he finally beat out the fire,
and then, seeing his toy destroyed, would fall to weeping. The cochero
observed with sadness that the race of little paper animals disappeared
each year, as if they had been attacked by the pest like the living
animals. He, the abused Sinong, remembered his two magnificent horses,
which, at the advice of the curate, he had caused to be blessed to
save them from plague, spending therefor ten pesos--for neither
the government nor the curates have found any better remedy for
the epizootic--and they had died after all. Yet he consoled himself
by remembering also that after the shower of holy water, the Latin
phrases of the padre, and the ceremonies, the horses had become so
vain and self-important that they would not even allow him, Sinong,
a good Christian, to put them in harness, and he had not dared to whip
them, because a tertiary sister had said that they were _sanctified_.

The procession was closed by the Virgin dressed as the Divine Shepherd,
with a pilgrim's hat of wide brim and long plumes to indicate the
journey to Jerusalem. That the birth might be made more explicable, the
curate had ordered her figure to be stuffed with rags and cotton under
her skirt, so that no one could be in any doubt as to her condition. It
was a very beautiful image, with the same sad expression of all the