In the farm-houses, and in the dwellings of the middle-class, the creche is placed always in the living-room, and so becomes an intimate part of the family life. On a table set in a corner is represented a rocky hill-side--dusted with flour to represent snow--rising in terraces tufted with moss and grass and little trees and broken by foot-paths and a winding road. This structure is very like a Provencal hill-side, but it is supposed to represent the rocky region around Bethlehem. At its base, on the left, embowered in laurel or in holly, is a wooden or pasteboard representation of the inn; and beside the inn is the stable: an open shed in which are grouped little figures representing the several personages of the Nativity. In the centre is the Christ-Child, either in a cradle or lying on a truss of straw; seated beside him is the Virgin; Saint Joseph stands near, holding in his hand the mystic lily; with their heads bent down over the Child are the ox and the ass--for those good animals helped with their breath through that cold night to keep him warm. In the foreground are the two _ravi_--a man and a woman in awed ecstasy, with upraised arms--and the adoring shepherds. To these are added on Epiphany the figures of the Magi--the Kings, as they are called always in French and in Provencal--with their train of attendants, and the camels on which they have brought their gifts. Angels (pendent from the farm-house ceiling) float in the air above the stable. Higher is the Star, from which a ray (a golden thread) descends to the Christ-Child's hand. Over all, in a glory of clouds, hangs the figure of Jehovah attended by a white dove. These are the essentials of the creche; and in the beginning, no doubt, these made the whole of it. But for nearly six centuries the delicate imagination of the Provencal poets and the cruder, but still poetic, fancy of the Provencal people have been enlarging upon the simple original: with the result that twoscore or more figures often are found in the creche of to-day. Either drawing from the quaintly beautiful mediaeval legends of the birth and childhood of Jesus, or directly from their own quaintly simple souls, the poets from early times have been making Christmas songs--noels, or nouve as they are called in Provencal--in which new subordinate characters have been created in a spirit of frank realism, and these have materialized in new figures surrounding the creche. At the same time the fancy of the people, working with a still more naive directness along the lines of associated ideas, has been making the most curiously incongruous and anachronistic additions to the group.