go and come in secret. They gave gifts to new-born infants. Some were
very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared
irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even
unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their
feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one
found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to
a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained
the Fates, they were always the Destinies.[191]

[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, index, under the words _Fontaine des
Groseilliers_.]

[Footnote 187: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 67-210; vol. ii. pp. 391 _et
seq._]

[Footnote 188: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, ed. Tuetey, p. 267.]

[Footnote 189: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 209.]

[Footnote 190: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 187, 209; vol. ii, pp. 390,
404, 450.]

[Footnote 191: Wolf, _Mythologie des fees et des elfes_, 1828, in 8vo.
A. Maury, _Les fees au moyen age_, 1843, in 18mo, and _Croyances et
legendes du moyen age_, Paris, 1896, in 8vo.]

Near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the
highroad to Neufchateau and casting a grateful shade.[192] The beech was
venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred
in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised Gaul.[193] No hand
dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "Even the lilies are not
more beautiful,"[194] said a rustic. Like the spring the tree had many
names. It was called _l'Arbre-des-Dames_, _l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames_,
_l'Arbre-des-Fees_, _l'Arbre-Charmine-Fee-de-Bourlemont_, _le
Beau-Mai_.[195]

[Footnote 192: Richer, _Histoire manuscrite de Jeanne d'Arc_, ms. fr.
10,448, fols. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 193: For tree worship, see an article by M. Henry Carnoy in
_La tradition_, 15 March, 1889.]

[Footnote 194: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 422.]

[Footnote 195: _Ibid._, index, under the words _Arbre des Fees_.]

Every one at Domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been
seen under _l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames_. In the old days, when Berthe
was spinning, a lord of Bourlemont, called Pierre Granier,[196] became
a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the
beech-tree. A romance told of their loves. One of Jeanne's godmothers,
who was a scholar at Neufchateau, had heard this story, which closely
resembled that tale of Melusina so well known in Lorraine.[197] But a
doubt re