But, next after these
spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation.
The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it
was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest
(_cure_) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to
keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a
statistical view: certain weeds 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 the licensed victualer. 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"--
"like 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.
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