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 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 FђE 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,