tnote 205: For the traditions of fairies at Domremy and for
Jeanne's opinion of them, see _Trial_, index, under the word _Fees_.]

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,--called by the Church
"_Laetare_ Sunday," because during the mass of the day was chanted the
passage beginning _Laetare Jerusalem_,--the peasants of Bar held a
rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together
to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. The peasants of
Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont;
those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[206]
They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlemont
themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a
babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlemont, lord of Domremy and Greux,
died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville,
who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of
Lorraine.[207]

[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the
Well-Dressing at Domremy, see _Trial_, index, under the word
_Fontaine_.]

[Footnote 207: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 _et seq._ S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xx-xxii.]

At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the
old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of
flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts,
hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the
housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the
Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes
at nightfall.

[Footnote 208: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]

Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part
in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy
nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but
at the Gooseberry Spring and _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[209]

[Footnote 209: _Ibid._, pp. 391-462.]

In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions.
She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose
chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang
garlands on the branches of _l'Arbre-des-Fees_. Jeanne, like the
others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others,
sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them
away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their
disappearance was