Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, vol 1 | Page 9

far away; but in none of these was the person in a state of sin. No; the
apparition was in these cases only a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that
soul's redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long before, and with
them peace--peace that might no more be disturbed--the eternal peace of God. I myself,
old and broken, wait with serenity; for I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it,
and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and danced around the
Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song, the song of L'Arbre fee de
Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet air--a solacing sweet air which has gone
murmuring through my dreaming spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled,
resting me and carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can
know or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to exiled Children of
the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries foreign to their speech and ways. You
will think it a simple thing, that song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember
what it was to us, and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the water wells up in
our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices break and we cannot sing the last lines:
"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee, Oh, rise upon
our sight!"
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the Tree when she
was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows it, yes, you will grant that:
L'ARBRE FE DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
Now what has kept your leaves so green, Arbre F‚e de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief, And you did comfort them and cheer Their
bruised hearts, and steal a tear That, healed, rose a leaf.

And what has built you up so strong, Arbre F‚e de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long Ten hundred years, in sooth, They've
nourished you with praise and song, And warmed your heart and kept it young-- A
thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts, Arbre F‚e de Bourlemont! And we shall always
youthful be, Not heeding Time his flight; And when, in exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting
yearn for glimpse of thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!
The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw them; because, a
hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had held a religious function under the
tree and denounced them as being blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from
redemption; and then he warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any
more immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good friends and dear to
them and never did them any harm, but the priest would not listen, and said it was sin and
shame to have such friends. The children mourned and could not be comforted; and they
made an agreement among themselves that they would always continue to hang
flower-wreaths on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved and
remembered, though lost to sight.
But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's mother passed by the Tree,
and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking anybody was by; and they were so
busy, and so intoxicated with the wild happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew
sharpened up with honey which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so
Dame Aubrey stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms
holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a great ring half as
big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and spreading their mouths with
laughter and song, which she could hear quite distinctly, and kicking their legs up as
much as three inches from the ground in perfect abandon and hilarity--oh, the very
maddest and witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures discovered her. They
burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and terror and fled every which way, with
their wee hazel-nut fists in their eyes and crying; and so disappeared.
The heartless woman--no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but only
thoughtless--went straight home and told the neighbors all