how can you talk like that? Who owns France?"

"God and the King."

"Not Satan?"

"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High--Satan owns no
handful of its soil."

"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them
in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there
all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of
God's approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again
in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out
that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God
gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their
home--theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a
right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that
children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five
long centuries, and never any hurt or harm; and the children loved them,
and now they mourn for them, and there is no healing for their grief.
And what had the children done that they should suffer this cruel
stroke? The poor fairies could have been dangerous company for the
children? Yes, but never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of
the Fiend? What of it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had;
and children have rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would
have spoken--I would have begged for the children and the fiends, and
stayed your hand and saved them all. But now--oh, now, all is lost;
everything is lost, and there is no help more!"

Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the
Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and friendship
because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very
reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing
they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them
by accident of birth and no fault of their own. "Poor little creatures!"
she said. "What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a
Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand
times more needs it!"

She had torn loose from Pere Fronte, and was crying, with her knuckles
in her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and now she burst
out of the place and was gone before we could gather our senses together
out of this