to the horns of all the kings of
France, from Philip Augustus downwards. They have seen St. Louis
exercise the dogs he brought with him from Egypt; Francis I. go
a-hunting with ten thousand horses in his train; and Peter of Russia
following his first stag. And so they are still haunted for the
imagination by royal hunts and progresses, and peopled with the faces
of memorable men of yore. And this distinction is not only in virtue of
the pastime of dead monarchs. Great events, great revolutions, great
cycles in the affairs of men, have here left their note, here taken
shape in some significant and dramatic situation. It was hence that
Guise and his leaguers led Charles the Ninth a prisoner to Paris. Here,
booted and spurred, and with all his dogs about him, Napoleon met the
Pope beside a woodland cross. Here, on his way to Elba, not so long
after, he kissed the eagle of the Old Guard, and spoke words of
passionate farewell to his soldiers. And here, after Waterloo, rather
than yield its ensign to the new power, one of his faithful regiments
burned that memorial of so much toil and glory on the Grand Master's
table, and drank its dust in brandy, as a devout priest consumes the
remnants of the Host.

IN THE SEASON

Close into the edge of the forest, so close that the trees of the
_bornage_ stand pleasantly about the last houses, sits a certain small
and very quiet village. There is but one street, and that, not long ago,
was a green lane, where the cattle browsed between the doorsteps. As you
go up this street, drawing ever nearer the beginning of the wood, you
will arrive at last before an inn where artists lodge. To the door (for
I imagine it to be six o'clock on some fine summer's even), half a
dozen, or maybe half a score, of people have brought out chairs, and now
sit sunning themselves and waiting the omnibus from Melun. If you go on
into the court you will find as many more, some in the billiard-room
over absinthe and a match of corks, some without over a last cigar and a
vermouth. The doves coo and flutter from the dovecot; Hortense is
drawing water from the well; and as all the rooms open into the court,
you can see the white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and
some idle painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes,
jangling a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-manger.
"_Edmond, encore un vermouth_," cries a man in velveteen, adding in a
tone of apologetic after-th