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,