"Personal Recollections Of Joan Of Arc vol 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Joan of Arc)

exorcism, but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing
which I cannot be so positive about.

In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground
toward 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