The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity, and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination of powers. {030}Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most interested. Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with banishment if he was poor. Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar, on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong, vigorous oak, the king of the forests. Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their offerings. This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these oaks the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with their families, for they were married; but they could have {031}only one wife, while the other chieftains were generally polygamists. [Illustration: 051] But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees, was by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from religious antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some provinces of Gaul and of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul especially, the elm prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France still continued for a long time to plant an elm tree before every newly built church, so as to draw God’s blessing the more surely upon it; and down to the end of the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held under an elm tree. Hence the curious {032}French proverb, which did not always have the mocking sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for me under the elm tree! (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a formal summons to appear before a judge has now come to mean: Wait till doomsday. [Illustration: 052] The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a dark cloud.