"And the wedding took place. Alain espoused Linor. Merlin chanted the nuptials. There were a hundred white robes for the priests, A hundred gold chains for the knights, A hundred festal blue mantles for the dames, And eight hundred hose for the poor. And all left satisfied. Alain left for the country of Leon With his wife, his grandmother, and a numerous suite.-- But Merlin alone disappeared. Merlin was lost. No one knows what of him is become. No one knows when Merlin will return."[6] CHAPTER V. THE PROPHECY OF MERLIN. Jeannette had listened to Sybille in rapt attention, struck above all by the singular circumstance of a peasant marrying the daughter of a king. From that moment Jeannette pardoned herself for having so often, since the previous evening, permitted her thoughts to turn to that young Sire, so sweet, so beautiful, so brave and yet so unfortunate through his mother's misconduct and the cruelty of the English. When Sybille's recital was ended, a short silence ensued which was broken by Jeannette: "Oh, god-mother, what a beautiful legend! It would be still more beautiful if, the Sire of Leon having to fight so cruel an enemy as the English, Alain, the peasant, had saved the King before wedding his daughter! But what did become of Merlin, the great enchanter Merlin?" "It is said that he must sleep a thousand years. But before he fell asleep he prophesied that the harm a woman would do to Gaul would be redressed by a young girl, a young girl of this region--" "This region in which we live, god-mother?" "Yes, of the borders of Lorraine; and that she would be born near a large oak forest." Jeannette clasped her hands in astonishment and she looked at Sybille in silence, revolving in her mind the prophecy of Merlin that France was to be saved by a young girl of Lorraine, perchance of Domremy! Was not the emancipatrix to come from an old oak forest? Was not the village of Domremy situated close to a forest of centennarian oaks?[7] "What! God-mother," Jeannette inquired, "can that be true--did Merlin make that prophecy?" "Yes," answered Sybille, thinking that surely the time had come when the prophecy of the Gallic bard was to be fulfilled, "yes, more than a thousand years ago Merlin so prophesied." "How did he do it, god-mother?" Sybille leaned her forehead on her hand, collected herself, and in a low voice, speaking slowly, she imparted to her god-daughter the mysterious prophecy in the following words, to which the child listened with religious absorption: "When down goes the sun and the moon shines, I sing. Young, I sang--become old still I sing. People look for me, but they find me not. People will cease looking for, and then will they find me. It matters little what may happen-- What must be shall be!