With my morning coffee came the explanation of a quite impossible smell of frying dough-nuts which had puzzled me on the preceding day: a magnificent golden-brown _fougasso_, so perfect of its kind that any Provencal of that region--though he had come upon it in the sandy wastes of Sahara--would have known that its creator was Mise Fougueiroun. To compare the _fougasso_ with our homely dough-nut does it injustice. It is a large flat open-work cake--a grating wrought in dough--an inch or so in thickness, either plain or sweetened or salted, fried delicately in the best olive-oil of Aix or Maussane. It is made throughout the winter, but its making at Christmas time is of obligation; and the custom obtains among the women--though less now than of old--of sending a _fougasso_ as a Christmas gift to each of their intimates. As this custom had in it something more than a touch of vainglorious emulation, I well can understand why it has fallen into desuetude in the vicinity of Vielmur--where Mise Fougueiroun's inspired kitchening throws all other cook-work hopelessly into the shade. As I ate the "horns" (as its fragments are called) of my _fougasso_ that morning, dipping them in my coffee according to the prescribed custom, I was satisfied that it deserved its high place in the popular esteem. When I joined the Vidame below stairs I found him under such stress of Christmas excitement that he actually forgot his usual morning suggestion--made always with an off-hand freshness, as though the matter were entirely new--that we should take a turn along the lines of the Roman Camp. He was fidgeting back and forth between the hall (our usual place of morning meeting) and the kitchen: torn by his conflicting desires to attend upon me, his guest, and to take his accustomed part in the friendly ceremony that was going on below. Presently he compromised the divergencies of the situation, though with some hesitation, by taking me down with him into Mise Fougueiroun's domain--where he became frankly cheerful when he found that I was well received. Although the morning still was young, work on the estate had been ended for the day, and about the door of the kitchen more than a score of labourers were gathered: all with such gay looks as to show that something of a more than ordinarily joyous nature was in train. Among them I recognized the young fellow whom we had met with his wife carrying away the yule-log; and found that all of them were workmen upon the estate who--either being married or having homes within walking distance--were to be furloughed for the day. This was according to the Provencal custom that Christmas must be spent by one's own fire-side; and it also was according to Provencal custom that they were not suffered to go away with empty hands.