splendid costuming and the flamboyant
architectural accessories of Renaissance times in France and we have
what is assuredly not to be found in other lands, a spectacular and
imposing pageant of mediaeval and Renaissance life and manners which is
superlative from all points of view.

This is perhaps hard, sometimes, to reconcile with the French attitude
towards outdoor life to-day, when _la chasse_ means the hunting of tame
foxes (a sport which has been imported from across the channel),
"_sport_" means a prize fight, and a garden party or a _fete-champetre_
a mere gossiping rendezvous over a cup of badly made tea. In the France
of the olden time they did things differently--and better.

Not all French history was made, or written, within palace walls; much
of it came into being in the open air, like the two famous meetings by
the Bidassoa, Napoleon's first sight of Marie Louise on the highroad
leading out from Senlis, or his making the Pope a prisoner at the Croix
de Saint Heram, in the Forest of Fontainebleau.

It is this change of scene that makes French history so appealing to
those who might otherwise let it remain in shut-up and dry-as-dust books
on library shelves.

The French monarchs of old were indeed great travellers, and it is by
virtue of the fact that affairs of state were often promulgated and
consummated _en voyage_ that a royal stamp came to be acquired by many a
chateau or country-house which to-day would hardly otherwise be
considered as of royal rank.

Throughout France, notably in the neighbourhood of Paris, are certain
chateaux--palaces only by lack of name--of the nobility where royalties
were often as much at home as under their own royal standards. One
cannot attempt to confine the limits where these chateaux are to be
found, for they actually covered the length and breadth of France.

Journeying afield in those romantic times was probably as comfortably
accomplished, by monarchs at least, as it is to-day. What was lacking
was speed, but they lodged at night under roofs as hospitable as those
of the white and gold caravanserai (and some more humble) which perforce
come to be temporary abiding places of royalties _en tour_ to-day. The
writer has seen the Dowager Queen of Italy lunching at a neighbouring
table at a roadside _trattoria_ in Piedmont which would have no class
distinction whatever as compared with the average suburban road-house
across the Atlantic. At Biarritz, too, the automob