s mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark
its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy
sequester herself from the haunts of licensed victuallers. A village is too
much for her nervous delicacy: at most, she can tolerate a distant view
of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble
which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at
Domremy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men and
women must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. But the
forests of Domremy--those were the glories of the land: for, in them abode
mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength.
"Abbeys there were, and abbey windows, dim and dimly seen--as Moorish
temples of the Hindoos," that exercised even princely power both in
Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced
the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy
legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, in no degree
to disturb the deep solitude of the region; many enough to spread a network
or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen
wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most
afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into
courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the
Vosges on the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much notice
from Europe, except in 1813-14, for a few brief months, when they fell
within Napoleon's line of defence against the Allies. But they are
interesting for this, amongst other features--that they do not, like some
loftier ranges, repel woods: the forests and they are on sociable terms.
_Live and let live_ is their motto. For this reason, in part, these tracts
in Lorraine were a favorite hunting ground with the Carlovingian princes.
About six hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to
have hunted there. That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions
of a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if
the race was not extinct) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary
hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen, at intervals,
that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, at the least, but
possibly a hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing
wa