You may laugh if you will, but a vine-dresser of the neighborhood named
Garrigue, without doubt a descendant of Garrigou, has assured me that
one Christmas night, finding himself a little so-so-ish, he became lost
on the mountain beside Trinquelague, and behold what he saw! At eleven
o'clock, nothing. All was silent, dark, lifeless. Suddenly, toward
midnight, a chime sounded up above from a clock, an old, old chime
which seemed six leagues away. Pretty soon, on the ascending road,
Garrigue saw lights trembling in the uncertain shadows. Under the porch
of the chapel somebody walked, somebody whispered:

"Good-evening, Master Arnoton."

"Good-evening, good-evening, my children."

When the whole company was entered, my vine-dresser, who was exceedingly
brave, approached stealthily, and peeping through the broken door saw a
strange spectacle. All those who had passed him were ranged about the
choir, in the ruined nave, as if the ancient benches still existed.
Beautiful dames in brocade with coifs of lace; seigneurs bedizzened from
top to toe; peasants in flowered jackets like those of our
grandfathers,--everything with an ancient air, faded, dusty, worn-out.
Now and then the night-birds, habitual dwellers in the chapel, awakened
by all these lights, winged about the candles, whose flames mounted
straight and vague as if they burnt behind gauze. And what amused
Garrigue most was a certain personage with great steel spectacles, who
shook at each instant his high black peruke, on which one of the birds
had alighted and entangled itself, silently beating its wings.

At the farthest end, a little old man of boyish size, on his knees in
the midst of the choir, pulled desperately at the chimeless and silent