"The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan...
The river of Kishon swept them away..."
—The Song of Deborah

This story, based on an episode in the Bible's Book of Judges, took place about 200 years before the days of Saul and David, and about 1200 before the birth of Christ.

� PROLOGUE �

Introducing a Hittite

I, URIAH-TARHUND, son of Arnandash the horse breeder, am a Hittite. I was born of a race of men who came down from the unknown north a thousand years ago and became the rulers of half the world. But that world has come to an end, and I can never go home again.

I was born in the Hittite province of Arzawa. My father was a kinsman of the chief of the province and raised horses in the grasslands to draw the battle chariots for which our land of Great Hatti was famed.

When I was a child, the world was as it had always been, or so I thought. We, the Hittites, lived in Great Hatti with its rocky mountains, its plains and its forests, stretching to the Black Sea of the north and the great sea of the west. We ruled the northern world; and Egypt, the accursed land, ruled the world of the south.

Other people did not matter. There were the lands of Canaan and the Amorites to the south, with their rich trading cities, divided between us and Egypt. To the east, the lands of Hurri and Mitanni sent us tribute; and sometimes traders from the great city of Babylon came to our towns and villages, but I never spoke to them.

For the nobles of Great Hatti, whose ancestors came down from the northern wilderness a thousand years ago, scorned all merchants and scribes and left such work to the dark skinned, ancient peoples of the land, who had lived there since the world began. Our women, like my mother and my sister Annitis, were kept close at home to guard them from these people; and I myself was not allowed to speak even to the elders of the ancient village where we lived. It was so wherever our fair skinned ancestors had settled and conquered... even, the story tellers said, in the far off Hindus valley.

The world was as it had always been, and it was protected by the gods. We Hittites worshipped all the gods, some of them our own, brought with us from the unknown north; many of them the gods of the people with whom we traded or who sent us tribute. We worshipped them all, and we knew that they would always keep us safe and strong.

But they did not. My story will tell of how they failed us, how disaster came upon us all, and how strangely I have survived it. It will tell of the rise and fall of nations, the fading of old glories and the birth of new. And it will tell much of that little strip of land called Canaan to the south, between us and the accursed land of Egypt, which was only a name to me when I was a child. For all the wealth and all the armies and all the glories of the nations have passed through that little land and probably always will; and the story of the kings of Canaan is the story of the world.

� 1 �
THE SEA PEOPLE

I BEGIN MY story with the day I was thirteen years old, the day my father told me I must give up the great horse, Labarnash.

Labarnash was the best horse we ever bred. My father had bought the mare who gave him birth from a trader who had gotten her from the lands around the southern desert. The horses there are larger, more slender, and swifter than our small stocky horses of the north; and Labarnash showed his greatness in his large, well set out eyes and longer ears, his sloping shoulders and round ribs, and his dark gold color.

He was to have been my horse, and I had named him with the titles of the old kings of Hatti, meaning "Great One." I had been in the stable when his mother had first given him birth, and it was I who first saw him stagger onto his long, wobbly legs.

My father had given me full charge of his training and promised that if I handled him well, he would give him to me for my own. So it was I who first haltered him; who first fed him grain; who cared for his hoofs, who combed his mane and tail and groomed him with my own fingers. And it was I who, a year after his birth, first harnessed him beside his mother to a light chariot and drove him out across the steppes.

But now my father had broken his promise. He saw the wonder and reproach in my eyes as I stood before him, my hand on Labarnash's neck, and he tried to make me understand.

"It is the thirteenth year of the reign of the king," he said, "and thirteen is a holy number. All loyal vassals must offer tribute, the best they have to give, and Labarnash is our best. And Uriah, there is more."

He drew me closer to him and spoke slowly, as if to give his words more weight.

"I have kept these things from your mother and sister," he said to me. "But you are a man now, and may know the truth. There is trouble in the land of Hatti. Do you remember the stories of the rebel chief, Maduwattas?"

I shivered. Every child knew the stories that were told of Maduwattas. For many years there had been a shadow across our world. Out across the western sea lived the men we called the sea people, whose great island was Crete and whose great city was Mycenae on the western mainland. They called themselves Achaeans. Their princes were sometimes sent to Hattusas, our great city, to learn the arts of chariots and horsemanship, and they had become jealous of our lands and power.

In the years when my father was a child, a Hittite traitor called Maduwattas had sold himself to Atreus, an Achaean chief, and had come raiding and burning into the province of Arzawa. Some of the old Arzawans, who hated their Hittite masters, had joined him and a time of terror had come upon the land that had never been forgotten.

"But Maduwattas has been dead for many years," I said. "And Atreus the Achaean must be a very old man."

"Their spirit is still alive," said my father. "Rumors have come to us from the north of strange tribes from over the border who are bringing terror upon the people there. And even here in the south strange sights have been seen and strange stories are being told. There are those who say that such trouble is coming upon the land as has never been seen before, and that the hand of the king is not as strong upon the country as it has been before. He did not make the holy pilgrimage this year, to lead the worship of the gods of the provinces." He stared before him a moment, then smiled and laid his hand on my shoulder. "You see why we must all prove our loyalty and our faith in this holy year."

"I understand," I said at last, though my hand tightened on the mane of Labarnash.

"Good," said my father. "Then tomorrow we will go to Haballa and find a caravan to take us to Hattusas."

"Hattusas?" I cried. "The great city?"

"Yes," said my father, pleased that my spirits had been raised. "There will be a great pilgrimage and great celebrations. If our king will not come to us, we will go to him."

And for a moment I almost forgot my grief over Labarnash in my excitement over the journey we were to make. For I had never been to Hattusas, or to any town except Haballa, for the horse fairs.

My father told the servants of our plans for the journey and gave strict orders for the guarding of our house and lands. He commanded all the men of the household to keep themselves well armed. For my mother and sister, being women, were to be left behind.

"If I were an Egyptian woman I would be allowed to go," said my sister Annitis bitterly, and my mother frowned at the name of the accursed land.

"Women in Egypt are as evil as the men," she said.

My father watched them with troubled eyes. And once, during that last night before the journey, I thought he had changed his mind. Then he shook his head as if in anger.

"I will not stay at home in fear in this holy year," he said, "because of rumors and old women's stories. There are people in Arzawa who have always hated the king of Hatti. It is they who are trying to spread fear among those of us who are loyal. Still, I could wish that Hattusas were nearer home."

I was not worried. "Nothing could happen to Mother and Annitis," I told my father. "The gods will protect us all."

And so we joined a caravan, my father and I, for the journey to the great city.

It was a journey of many days through grasslands, hills, valleys, and later the rocky mountainous lands of the north. For Hattusas lay in its mountains like the nest of a giant bird. A robbers' retreat, the Egyptians called it. My heart still beats faster as I remember the road that led to it marked, as we neared the city, by giant images in stone .. . lions for the holy goddess of Arinna, bulls for Teshub, god of thunder, god of the double axe. To reach the city, we had to ford a great river, which I did not like; for I was afraid of water.

"Will it be as big as Haballa?" I asked my father. "Will there be a fair with jugglers and fire eaters? I wish it were time for the winter festival. I would like to see that play of the god slaying the dragon again."

My father laughed.

"Once you have seen Hattusas," he said, "all others, even Haballa, will be as mud villages in your eyes."

And it was true. The first sight of the great, rock-hewn wall of the city struck awe into my heart. The gateways and buildings of solid stone were such as I had never seen before; and I was so taken up with the great sights that I forgot that we must leave Labarnash in the stables of the king until the moment was upon us; and, for the first time, I realized that I would probably never see him again.

If I had been alone, I would have thrown my arms around his proud neck and wept and kissed him. But I was not alone, and could only watch while they took him away ... Labarnash whom I had raised and come to love, and whom I had named "Great One."

When he had disappeared from sight, I turned to my father in a kind of amazement.

"I will never see him again!" I cried.

"How can you be sure?" said my father. "It is in the hands of the gods."

But I was not comforted. For the first time in my life, I had lost a thing I loved.

That night they held the celebration in honor of the thirteenth year of the reign of the king. My father and I, being related to the great families of Hattusas, were allowed a place in the hall.

I forgot my grief for a while in wonder at all I saw. All the loyal chiefs of great Hatti were there. . . our own noble kinsman, the chief of Arzawa, in fashionably braided hair, pointed shoes, tall hat with upturned brim, earrings and a cane. There were ambassadors from Egypt in pleated kilts and elaborately curled wigs. There was the Dardanian chief Paris Aleksandus, from distant Troy, whose grandfather had fought with us against the second Rameses of Egypt at the battle of Kadesh.

The young prince who would be the second Subiluliuma was with his father the king and, when they stood together on the great stone stairway, all shouted and clashed their wine cups.

"Labarnash! Labarnash!" they cried, meaning "great one." And tears came to my eyes at the thought of my own Labarnash. But my father looked strange and grim; and many there must have known in their hearts that such a sight would never again be seen in Hattusas. For, though we did not know it on that day, the glory of Great Hatti was at an end.

We did not stay long in the great city. Things had become strangely quiet in Hattusas. People spoke little, and my father said it was as if someone had muffled the sounds of the streets with a blanket. On the morning of our departure, a madman ran through the temple square shouting:

"Midas is coming! Midas is coming to destroy us all!"

But two soldiers seized him and dragged him off. I suppose he was killed and hung up by the gates of the city, like other criminals that we had seen there.

"What was he saying?" I asked my father.

"He spoke of Midas the Phrygian," he replied. "A barbarian chief, one of the sea people. There are stories that he has come into the north with his tribe and is laying waste wherever he passes, but the King has forbidden it to be told, for fear of frightening the people. Whether this is true or not, I give thanks that it is still far from Arzawa."

As we passed from the city with the returning caravan, I looked back at the great walls. I am glad I stared at them so long and remember them so well, for I never saw them again.

It was on the road back into Arzawa that we saw it. From a valley some distance away a strange smell reached us and the sight of smoke curling into the air. The master of the caravan was a Babylonian and interested only in the merchandise he was carrying toward the western sea. He would not stop or leave the road to see what the trouble was, or if there were any in need of help.

"Uriah," said my father, "you and I are men of Arzawa and cannot pass by when our brothers may be in distress."

So we left the caravan and rode our sturdy little northern horses as fast as we could toward the strange thing in the valley. Though I have seen many terrible sights since then, I still remember that one.

A village had been burned to the ground along with the land around it. Many men lay dead and dying, and some women and children; though many of these had perhaps fled or been carried off. Only one man was left unharmed, sitting dazed and staring against the stone wall of a half-destroyed hut.

"Who has done this thing?" cried my father, speaking to him as if he had been a brother, though he was only a serf, of the ancient people of the land.

"Maduwattas," replied the man. I shuddered and drew closer to my father.

"Maduwattas is dead," said my father.

"But he has come back," said the man. "And he has brought the sea people with him."

"Surely he is mad, father," I whispered, shuddering again and trying to draw him away.

But my father spoke gently to the man; and soon he began to sob and talk to him, telling him how a great line of ox carts had come into the valley, guarded by armed men in chariots, and carrying women and children and all manner of riches.

"They came from the west," said the man, "and did not speak our language, so they are surely from the sea. The armed men fell upon us and killed us all, except some of our women and children that they took away to serve them. Why did they do it? Our village was not loyal to the King of Hatti."

I knew father ought to kill the man at once for saying that, but was glad when he did not.

"The sea people," said my father softly. "Atreus is old or dead; but his sons are mighty among the Achaeans. They have come into Arzawa, as Midas the Phrygian has come into the north. Come, we will ride for home."

We did not go back to the road or rejoin the caravan, but rode across the country with all speed till we came to our own acres, and found that we had come too late. Our village too had been burned, our home and our land destroyed, and our servants slain.

My father said nothing at the sight, but threw himself from his horse and ran among the bodies and the smoking ruins, searching for some sign of my mother and my sister. I stayed on my horse, for I could not have moved.

But then my father gave a great cry and fell on his knees, and I knew what he had found. I knew that I would never see my mother and my sister Annitis again and that all the world, as I had known it, had been destroyed.

This happened in my fourteenth year. They say that four years later, Hattusas itself was destroyed. The armies came down from the north and the west and from the islands in the western sea, with giant shields and plumed helmets decorated with the tusks of boars. Wives and families followed in ox carts laden with all their possessions .. . precious iron ornaments and dainty gold and silver objects of the old style from Crete and Mycenae. None stood before them. No Dardanians from Troy came to our aid, for Troy had fought for its life and lost, near the shores of the western sea.

For three years after the destruction of our home my father and I lived on in the ruins, making a bare living with our bees and what was left of our orchards and the food we could raise. We could not fight the enemy, for there were none to join us. Those who had not been slain by the sea people were either too terrified to stand against them, or did not care who were their masters, Achaeans or Hittite nobles. We lived as servants of the conquerors, who would come to us at any time and take what they wanted, and strike us down if we did not give it to them soon enough.

One day when I was sixteen, two men drove up in a chariot to where my father and I were gathering in fruit. One was a captain of the sea people, and the other was his servant and charioteer.

"You!" said the captain to my father, as we had spoken to the serfs in the old days. "All that you harvest is confiscated for our chief in Haballa. My driver will stay with you and see that you don't shirk."

My father stood for a moment with his head bowed. Then suddenly he straightened and stared into the eyes of the captain.

"No," he said. And for the first time in three years, he seemed like my father again.

The captain was a tall man with blue eyes and a dark brown beard. His driver was short and dark and powerful. The driver seized my father from behind and held him while the captain struck him across the face, shoulders, and chest with the butt end of his spear.

"The gods destroy you, you dogs!" I shouted, and sprang upon the captain. But a blow from his spear sent me sprawling on the ground, while he finished beating my father. I cried out in agony at every blow he received, but my father made no sound.

Afterward the captain stood back and looked at us in disgust.

"They will do no work today," he said to his driver. "Come. But," he shouted at us over his shoulder, "we will be back."

My father lay on the ground where the driver had let him fall, and at first I thought he was dead. Then I heard him breathing with some difficulty, and I managed to get him into the house, though he cried out with pain at being lifted.

I stayed with him through the day and through the night, but I soon knew that he would not live. He was too badly hurt, too many bones had been broken and he was too weak and tired to fight against death.

"Don't die," I begged him. "Everything is gone. Not you, too."

But he shook his head. "You must not stay here," he said at last. "Promise me."

"Where can I go?" I asked him. "This is my home."

"Not now," he said. "It is their home now." He was silent for a time, summoning his strength. "You must go south," he said after a while.

"Where south, Father?" I asked softly, thinking that if he would keep talking, he would not die.

"To the land of Canaan. There is a town. A town called Harosheth. There is a man there."

"What man, Father?"

"A man . . . called Sisera. He will help you. For my sake."

"But what is he to you, Father? And how can I find him?"

"Promise," said my father. And, seeing that he could say no more, I gave my promise.

He did not speak again, and I saw that he was really dying. I clung to him, trying to hold him back from death, but it was no use.

He died. As the holy laws prescribed, I burned his body on a great pyre and mourned him for thirteen days; though there was no Old Woman to come from the village and say the magic rites over his body, nor had I oil or a silver jar in which to lay his bones, nor beer or wine to quench his funeral fire. But no man was ever better mourned.

And when the thirteen days were up, I made my way to Haballa and prepared myself for the long journey into the land of Canaan.

"It should be the objective and is definitely the responsibility of every rational Catholic mother and father to see that the child is educated, so that he can be truly Catholic with the consent of all his faculties." -- Francis Crotty, Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home Introduction

HOME EDUCATION: There's appearing, on the horizon of education, a dim but ery definite and most promising light. The light is coming from the homes of families that have placed their staff in the soil and given notice: thus far and no farther.

Home education is a growing potential that is both frightening and promising; frightening to those who have lost sight of the reason for education and who have attempted to reweave society into something inherently evil, and promising to those who have tried it and have not found it wanting.

The product of Catholic home education has to be seen not only in its contemporary context of a healthy and intelligent child being nurtured, but it must also be seen in its historical sense.

Historically, it is both interesting and essential to recall the reason the Roman civilization lived for seven centuries. The center and stability of this civilization was the home, the family. Then there was the older and wiser Hebrew world, similar to the Roman, with education also built into the home. Both civilizations were to suffer the loss of their worlds through the cultural effects of allowing others to teach their children.

Most historians agree that Rome's decline started with the importation of Greek slaves, who brought alien ideas from Greece to Rome. The Roman fathers gave over their responsibility to their Greek captives, who taught the Roman children a philosophy alien to the "natural law" philosophy of the Roman.

The natural qualities of modesty, bravery, constancy, prudence, and industry of the Roman home and hearth collapsed under the teachings of the Stoics. Moral and intellectual errors set in and the Roman world started its decline.

Similarly, albeit different in circumstances, the Hebrew civilization suffered the same fate. Seventy-five years before its fall, this civilization sounded its own death knell by decree requiring compulsory education: the children taken out of the home.

Another point, and perhaps the most salient, is that of the three cultures from which Western Civilization draws its heritage, the Greek culture was the only one which held woman in low esteem, not worthy of education.

In America the scene is different but the effect is the same. No matter the scene, the present day secular humanism that is rampant throughout all the parts of our culture mimics the Greek stoicism that helped destroy Rome. Our compulsory education brings in alien and atheistic philosophy that is destroying America by destroying first the home.

Home education is the clearest indication that a new day is coming in America, and in the world. It is "the end of the beginning" in America; a new age of wonder in God's creaiton is opening before us in the third millennium.

At Kolbe Academy we desire to assist the home to achieve the end for which it is created, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (to the greater glory of God).

It should be the objective and is definitely the responsibility of every rational Catholic mother and father to see that the child is educated, so that he can be truly Catholic with the consent of all his faculties.

Why Ignatian methods and procedures of education? This question can be answered by reviewing the historical consequences of the work of the Society of Jesus. THE SOCIETY OF JESUS began in the year 1540 A.D> Ignatius of Loyola and a handful of young students at the University of Paris formed the nucleus of what was to become the greatest religious order in the world.

Within 200 years, the Jesuits would have over 670 colleges, 200 high schools and a hundred seminaries thriving throughout the world. The Jesuits reached into the jungles of Paraguay, the duchies of Prussia, the steppes of Russia and into the back streets of Calcutta.

What amde these schools so prevalent and successful was, first, their signum fidei: "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam" or AMDG, around which The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius were built, second, their Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societas Iesu, which literally translates to "Plan and Organization of Studies in the Schools of the Society of Jess." Today, it is simply referred to as the Ratio Studiorum.

Along with the Ratio Studiorum came the Constitutions. The Constitutions guided the work of thousands upon thousands of Jesuits, who met and collaborated with intense charity and devotion to their vocation and under the sign of their order, AMDG. Their collaboration produced the plan of studies upon which their schools were built, and helped much of the culture and society of Europe to flourish.

These men came to their general meetings and for decades honed their methods. It was found, no matter where they taught, be it China or Luxembourg, that their method always produced the same, fine result. Their empirical data, which has never been equaled in either quantity or quality, developed a way of studies that, to this day, is unequalled in either product or success.

Whether in citing the principal capacities of human personality, underscoring the importance of student self-activity, describing how a student is best prepared for living in his world or providing the three purposes of the Prelection, the end objective was always kept in sight: eloquentia perfecta.

"ELOQUENTIA PERFECTA" is simply the Ignatian term for the concepts that go back to Tertullian and Cicero. For the school of the Roman, it was Rhetoric. Both Rhetoric and eloquentia perfecta meant the student who was able to "write, speak, and act well." It meant the person who would be able to live up to his fullest potential and bring to his society a cultured, balanced and productive citizen.

So it was with the "blackrobes," as they were called. They synthesized a method that stopped the Protestant revolution in its tracks and simultaneously stabilized Catholicism through the impact of their assistance at the great doctrinal Council of Trent, and gave the world men of culture and learning.

There is nothing mysterious or difficult about the principles involved in Ignatian education! What they did for the men in black can be done for the home. It will be seen, after reading this manual, that Ignatian education is comprised of much common sense. Why, then is it necessary to use it? We must begin to recognize the facility and promise that it contains.

These methods and objectives were developed under the influence of the two great works: (1) The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which one pontiff called "the Eighth Sacrament," and (2) the philosophical writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. These works were carefully developed by men who understood and implemented ordered thinking in their work.

The Jesuits were suppressed in 1773 by act of Pope Clement XIV. Thus, by the hand of the pontiff, all the schools, houses, funds and materials of the Society of Jesus were taken away. The order of 23,000 men was disbanded, and their fate struck into the granite of history.

Although the restoration of 1814 brought the order back, little was left with which to resume the work of their predecessors. It took a hundred years to bring the order back to full manpower, its educational capacity and vigor never returned.

Let us study the significance of our entry into the third millennium of history, in the midst of a number of converget and coincident events. Our Age of the Laity is ushered in during the two-thousandth year of the birth and childhood of Mary; during the five hundred years of the birth of St. Ignatius and of our hemisphere of America, and of the three-hundredth anniversary of the appearance of Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary in Paray-le-Monial, France. Her feast day is celebrated October 16, and during the 50th anniversary of the death of our co-patron Maximillian Kolbe.

We see great things unfold following the "Marian Year." We must seek a vantage point to see these things in perspective; perhaps that vantage point is the family.

Remember, God has called you and has great things in store for you. Let us work together in the motto of St. Pius X, Instaurare Omnia in Christo, and as we approach the third millennium, let us ponder the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "Are we preparing something beautiful for God?"

Francis Crotty
September 15, 1989
Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

CHAPTER I

I,THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchâteau, the 6th of January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics they were Armagnacs - patriots: they were for our own French King, crazy and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English, had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my father's small nobility, and when he reached Neufchâteau he reached it in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies, madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here, there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left to rot and create plagues.

And plagues they did create. Epidemics swept away the people like flies, and the burials were conducted secretly and by night; for public funerals were not allowed, lest the revelation of the magnitude of the plague's work unman the people and plunge them into despair. Then came, finally, the bitterest winter which had visited France in five hundred years. Famine, pestilence, slaughter, ice, snow - Paris had all these at once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the city in daylight and devoured them.

Ah, France had fallen low - so low! For more than three quarters of a century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a French one to flight.

When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon France; and although the English king went home to enjoy his glory, he left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came raiding through Neufchâteau one night, and by the light of our burning roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder brother, your ancestor, left behind with the Court) butchered while they begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden themselves.

I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose house-keeper became a loving mother to me. The priest in the course of time taught me to read and write, and he and I were the only persons in the village who possessed this learning.

At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte, became my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the village church, and the small garden of Joan's parents was behind the church. As to that family, there were Jacques d' Arc the father, his wife Isabel Romee; three sons - Jacques, ten years old, Pierre, eight, and Jean, seven; Joan, four, and her baby sister Catherine, about a year old. I had these children for playmates from the beginning. I had some other playmates besides - particularly four boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, Noel Rainguesson, and Edmond Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time; also two girls, about Joan's age, who by-and-by became her favorites; one was named Haumette, the other was called Little Mengette. These girls were common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew up, both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough, you see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing stranger, howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his reverence to those two humble old women who had been honored in their youth by the friendship ofJoan of Arc.

These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not bright, of course - you would not expect that - but good-hearted and companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they grew up they became properly stocked with narrownesses and prejudices got at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and without examination also - which goes without saying. Their religion was inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody's faith; and when the split came, when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once, nobody in Domremy was worried about how to choose among them - the Pope of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all. Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac - a patriot - and if we children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate the English and Burgundian name and polity in that way.


CHAPTER II

OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barn-like houses. The houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows - that is, holes in the walls which served for windows. The floors were of dirt, and there was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main industry; all the young folks tended flocks.

The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery plain extended in a wide sweep to the river - the Meuse; from the rear edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was the great oak forest - a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time. It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it, therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time, and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell. It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be and we not suspect it.

In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners, and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other - and lacked bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism, but whether it was there afterwards or not is a thing which I cannot be so positive about.

In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground towards Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech-tree with wide-reaching arms and a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on summer days the children went there - oh, every summer for more than five hundred years - went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time. and it was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures, as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred years - tradition said a thousand - but only the warmest affection and the most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there to see: for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes, it is not hearsay. And the reason it was known that the fairies did it was this - that it was made all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.

Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree -if all was well with his soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways: once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate winter aspect - then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time summerclad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through the divine days of their vanished youth?

Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true, but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it-and there is profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in afar land, then - if they be at peace with God - they turn their longing eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree, clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades and passes - but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has come, and that it has come from heaven.

Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel, and Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared twice - to a sinner. In fact they and many others said they knew it. Probably because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most things at second hand in this world.

Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, "Ah, he is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at the thought and whisper back, "Yes, 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 experience 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,
a 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 FEE DE BOURLEMONT

SONG OF THE CHILDREN


Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fee 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 Fee 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 alway green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont!
And we shall alway youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when in exile wand'ring we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
a 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 of the Fiend and barred out 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, not thinking anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from the ground in perfect abandon and hilarity - oh, the very maddest and witchingest dance the woman ever saw.

But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures discovered her. They burst out in one heart-breaking squeak of grief and terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their eyes and crying; and so disappeared.

The heartless woman - no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but only thoughtless - went straight home and told the neighbors all about it, whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying and begging-and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened at the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out of her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, "Joan, wake! Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies - come and save them; only you can do it."

But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must go, and never come back any more.

It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning big and noble and occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at them to prevent that.

The great tree - l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont was its beautiful name - was never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was always dear; is dear to me yet when I go there, now, once a year in my old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears and break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same afterwards. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies' protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a torment and have remained so to this day.

When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up before him where he sat, and made reverence and said:

"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it not so?"

"Yes, that was it, dear."

"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person is half naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is showing himself to that man?"

"Well-no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he said it.

"Is a sin a sin anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"

Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out -

"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew her to his side and put his arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:

"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit one, they not knowing that anyone was by; and because they were little creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the law was against the intention, not against the innocent act, and because they had no friend to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!"

The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:

"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking are condemned: would God I could bring the little creatures back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there, don't cry - nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend - don't cry, dear."

"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter, this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an act?" Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him laugh, and said:

"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on sackcloth and ashes; there-are you satisfied?"

Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man through her tears, and said, in her simple way:

"Yes, that will do - if it will clear you."

Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to him, and he said:

"Would you mind helping me, dear?"

"How, father?"

He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said: "Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."

The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his side and said:

"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by sackcloth and ashes - do please get up, father."

"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"

"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, father, won't you?"

"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not become me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little head."

The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and suffocations -

"There - now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."

The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and said -

"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I testify."

Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side again, and said:

"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the other children; is it not so?"

That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up and catch me in something - just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is travelling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:

"Yes, father."

"Did you hang them on the tree?"

"No, father."

"Didn't hang them there?"

"No."

"Why didn't you?"

"I - well, I didn't wish to."

"Didn't wish to?"

"No, father."

"What did you do with them?"

"I hung them in the church."

"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?"

"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that it was sinful to show them honor."

"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"
"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."
"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other children, couldn't they?"

"I suppose so - yes, I think so."

He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he did. He said:

"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it. In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?"

How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and set a trap for himself - that was all he had accomplished.

The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an energy and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish me, for I knew he had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax.

"Oh, father, 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 here 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 fmished 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 storm of words and this whirlwind of passion. The pere had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood there passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a person who is dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered toward the door of his little workroom, and as he passed through it I heard him murmur sorrowfully:

"Ah me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said true - I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame." When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set a trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I seemed to feel encouraged, and wondered if may hap I might get him into one; but upon reflection my heart went down, for this was not my gift.