surrounded as it was with a resplendent garden and a forest in
miniature, really a part of the Bois de Vincennes of to-day, where
roamed wild boar and wolves which furnished sport of a kingly kind.

The view from the terrace of the chateau must have been wonderfully
fine, the towers and roof-tops of old Paris being silhouetted against
the setting sun, its windows dominating the swift-flowing current of the
two rivers at the foot of the fortress walls.

The greatest event of history enacted under the walls of Conflans was
the battle and the treaty which followed after, between Louis XI and the
Comte de Charolais, in 1405.

Commynes recounts the battle as follows: "Four thousand archers were
sent out from Paris by the king, who fired upon the castle from the
river bank on both sides."

Bows and arrows were hardly effective weapons with which to shoot down
castle walls, but stragglers who left themselves unprotected were from
time to time picked off on both sides and much carnage actually ensued.
Finally a treaty of peace was arranged, by which, at the death of
Charles-le-Temeraire, according to usage, Louis XI absorbed the
proprietary rights in the castle and made it a _Maison Royale_,
bestowing it upon one of his favourites, Dame Gillette Hennequin.

The kings of France about this time developed a predilection for the
chateaux on the banks of the Loire, and Conflans was offered for sale in
1554. Divers personages occupied it from that time on, the Marechal de
Villeroy, the Connetable de Montmorency and, for a brief time, Cardinal
Richelieu.

It was in the Chateau de Conflans that was planned the foundation of the
French Academy; here Moliere and his players first presented "La
Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes"; and here, also, was held the marriage
of La Grande Mademoiselle with the unhappy Lauzan.

At the end of the reign of Louis XIV Fr. de Harlay-Chauvallon,
Archbishop of Paris, bought the property of Richelieu, and, with the
aid of Mansart and Le Notre, considerably embellished it within and
without. Madame de Sevigne, in one of her many published letters, writes
of the splendours which she saw at Conflans at this epoch.

Saint-Simon, the court chronicler, mentions that the gardens were so
immaculately kept that when the Archbishop and "La Belle" Duchesse de
Lesdiguieres used to promenade therein they were followed by a gardener
who, with a rake, sought to remove the traces of each footprint as soon
as made.