After the high-altar, the most brilliant spot was the altar of Saint Joseph, in the west transept; beside which was a magnificent creche--the figures half life-size, beautifully modelled, and richly clothed. But there was nothing whimsical about this creche: the group might have been, and very possibly had been, composed after a well-painted "Nativity" by some artist of the late Renaissance. The mass was the customary office; but at the Offertory it was interrupted by a ceremony that gave it suddenly an entirely Mediaeval cast: of which I felt more fully the beauty, and the strangeness in our time, because the Vidame sedulously had guarded against my having knowledge of it in advance. This was nothing less than a living rendering of the Adoration of the Shepherds: done with a simplicity to make one fancy the figures in Ghirlandojo's picture were alive again and stirred by the very spirit that animated them when they were set on canvas four hundred years ago. By some means only a little short of a miracle, a way was opened through the dense crowd along the centre of the nave from the door to the altar, and up this way with their offerings real shepherds came--the quaintest procession that anywhere I have ever seen. In the lead were four musicians--playing upon the _tambourin_, the _galoubet_, the very small cymbals called _palets_, and the bagpipe-like _carlamuso_--and then, two by two, came ten shepherds: wearing the long brown full cloaks, weather-stained and patched and mended, which seem always to have come down through many generations and which never by any chance are new; carrying tucked beneath their arms their battered felt hats browned, like their cloaks, by long warfare with sun and rain; holding in one hand a lighted candle and in the other a staff. The two leaders dispensing with staves and candles, bore garlanded baskets; one filled with fruit--melons, pears, apples, and grapes--and in the other a pair of doves: which with sharp quick motions turned their heads from side to side as they gazed wonderingly on their strange surroundings with their bright beautiful eyes.