Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, vol 1 | Page 7

an Armagnac--a patriot--and if we children hotly hated
nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate the English and Burgundian name and
polity in that way.
Chapter 2

The Fa‰ry Tree of Domremy
OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time and region.
It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and sheltered by the
overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The houses were dimly lighted by
wooden-shuttered windows--that is, holes in the walls which served for windows. The
floors were dirt, and there was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main
industry; all the young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery plain extended in a
wide sweep to the river--the Meuse; from the rear edge of the village a grassy slope rose
gradually, and at the top was the great oak forest--a forest that was deep and gloomy and
dense, and full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it by
outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons that spouted fire and
poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their homes in there. In fact, one was still living
in there in our own time. It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce,
and scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a cavalier's hat, and
an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know what, but very big, even unusually so for
a dragon, as everybody said who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was
of a brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it, therefore this
was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was not my opinion; I think there is no
sense in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person
without any bones in h8im he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber and
cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an opinion. But I will take
up this matter more at large at another time, and try to make the justness of my position
appear. As to that dragon, I always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue,
for that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a little way within
the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre Morel was in there one day and
smelt it, and recognized it by the smell. It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the
deadliest danger can be and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the earth would have
gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and get the reward, but in our time that
method had gone out, and the priest had become the one that abolished dragons. PŠre
Guillaume Fronte did it in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and
banners, and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it was
never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the smell never wholly
passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell again, for none had; it was only an
opinion, like that other--and lacked bones, you see. I know that the creature was there
before the exorcism, but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot
be so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward Vaucouleurs stood a
most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and a grand spread of shade, and by it
a limpid spring of cold water; and on summer days the children went there--oh, every
summer for more than five hundred years--went there and sang and danced around the
tree for hours together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it was

most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and hung them upon the
tree and about the spring to please the fairies that lived there; for they liked that, being
idle innocent little creatures, as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty
like wild flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the fairies did
any friendly thing they could for the children, such as keeping the spring always full and
clear and cold, and driving away serpents and insects that sting; and