eature except a few faithful descendants of the household had been even
within the limits of the park for nearly a hundred years, the practical
American mind may not have found much in these tales worth remembering.

Attempts, however, have not been wanting to penetrate the mysteries
surrounding Chateau Courance, but it is believed that none ever met with
success until a very recent period. The authorities always interfered by
virtue of a royal mandate, still on the statute-books of France, which
forbids any entry to the demesne of Courance without the express consent
of the count or his intendant. Furthermore, a superstitious dread of any
approach to the place prevails among the people, and this feeling has been
strong enough to defeat the several secret explorations known to have been
undertaken.

Courance, then, remained but a name and a shadow for many and many a year,
drifting slowly back to the sole dominion of Nature and out of the very
memory of mankind. But the late war, sweeping over the land and destroying
so much of old France, made a break at last in the barriers surrounding
the ancient demesne--not, indeed, by direct assault, as Fontainebleau and
its neighborhood were not in the line of the Prussian march, but by one of
those little eddies of reaction by which great movements affect distant
currents of event.

Among the first to fly from Paris when the gates opened at the end of the
war were the artists. More hungry to feast their eyes than to satisfy
physical cravings, many hastened to Fontainebleau, content with Madame
Busque's thin pottage if they could but spend their days among the trees.
Two American painters were of their number--Perry from Boston, and
Johnston from Baltimore. Belonging to the Can't-get-away Club, they had
stood the siege manfully, and been very helpful at our legation when the
whole establishment was turned into a hospital. On receipt of the fund
from the United States for the relief of sufferers from the war, Minister
Washburne appointed these gentlemen on the sub-commission of distribution
in the district of the Loiret. The active and enthusiastic young men were
instrumental in doing a vast amount of good, and were the recipients of
endless ovations of the gratitude which poured out in effusion at that
time toward all bearing the American name. It is impossible to overstate
the hearty good-will entertained by all classes and manifested on all
occasions, an opportunity to do a se