These Woods Have Rung To The Horns
Of All The Kings Of France, From Philip Augustus Downwards.
They
have seen Saint 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 Gruise 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.
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