Just how great a part the royal hunt played in the open-air life of the
French court all who know their French history and have any familiarity
with the great forests of France well recognize.

The echo of French country architecture as evinced in the "_maisons de
plaisance_" and "_rendezvous de chasse_" scattered up and down the
France of monarchial times lives until to-day, scarcely fainter than
when the note was originally sounded. Often these establishments were
something more than a mere hunting-lodge, or shooting-box, indeed they
generally aspired to the proportions of what may readily be accepted as
a country-house. They established a specious type of architecture which
in many cases grew, in later years, into a chateau or palace of
manifestly magnificent appointments.

At the great hunting exposition recently held at Vienna the _clou_ of
the display was a French royal hunting-lodge in the style of Louis XVI,
hung with veritable Gobelin tapestries, loaned by the French government
and picturing "The Hunt in France." It was called by the critics a
unique painting in a beautiful frame.

In the days of Francis I and his sons, the royal hunt was given a great
impetus by Catherine de Medici, wife of Henri II.

Francis, in company with his sons, had gone to Marseilles to meet the
Medici bride, who was on her way to make her home at the Paris Louvre,
and when he found her possessed of so lively manners and such great
intelligence he became so charmed with her that, it is said, he danced
with her all of the first evening. What pleased the monarch even more,
and perhaps not less his sons, was that she shot with an arquebuse like
a sharpshooter, and could ride to hounds like a natural-born Amazon. She
was more than a rival, as it afterwards proved, of that arch-huntress,
Diane de Poitiers.

History recounts in detail that last royal hunt of Francis I at
Rambouillet, when he was lying near to death, the guest of his old
friend, d'Angennes.

The old manor, half hunting-lodge, half fortress, and very nearly royal
in all its appointments, proved a comfortable enough rest-house, and on
the day after his arrival, in March, 1547, the monarch commanded the
preparations for a royal hunt to commence at daybreak in the
neighbouring forest.

The equipage started forth in full ceremonial on the quest of stag and
boar. The bugles blew and a sort of stimulated courage once more entered
the king's breast, courage born of the excit