Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, vol 1 | Page 8

so there was never
any unkindness between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years--tradition said a thousand--but only the warmest affection and the most perfect trust
and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies mourned just as that child's
playmates did, and the sign of it was there to see; for before the dawn on the day of the
funeral they hung a little immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under
the tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the reason it was
known that the fairies did it was this--that it was made all of black flowers of a sort not
known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the Children of
the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a mystic privilege not granted to
any others of the children of this world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to
die, then beyond the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose
soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree--if all was well with his soul. That was what
some said. Others said the vision came in two ways: once as a warning, one or two years
in advance of death, when the soul was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in
its desolate winter aspect--then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance
came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time summer-clad and beautiful; but
if it were otherwise with that soul the vision was withheld, and it passed from life
knowing its doom. Still others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the
sinless dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear reminder of
their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts like the picture of the Tree
that was the darling of their love and the comrade of their joys and comforter of their
small griefs all through the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and some another.
One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last one. I do not say anything
against the others; I think they were true, but I only know that the last one was; and it is
my thought that if one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things
which he cannot be sure about, he will have the st3eadier mind for it--and there is profit
in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a far land, then--if they be at
peace with God--they turn their longing eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as
through a rift in a cloud that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree,
clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping away to the
river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet the fragrance of the flowers
of home. And then the vision fades and passes--b they know, they know! and by their
transfigured faces you know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message
that has come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and Jacques d'Arc, and
many others believed that the vision appeared twice--to a sinner. In fact, they and many

others said they knew it. Probably because their fathers had known it and had told them;
for one gets most things at second hand in this world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two apparitions of the
Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one saw a villager of ours with his face
ash-white and rigid with a ghastly fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his
neighbor, "Ah, he is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at
the thought and whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree."
Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put aside with a wave of the
hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer
and nearer to being proof all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day
become authority--and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared announcing a death
which was still