MORALITY
Strange Indeed Is The Attraction Of The Forest For The Minds Of
Men.
Not one or two only, but a great chorus of grateful voices
have arisen to spread abroad its fame.
Half the famous writers of
modern France have had their word to say about Fontainebleau.
Chateaubriand, Michelet, Beranger, George Sand, de Senancour,
Flaubert, Murger, the brothers Goncourt, Theodore de Banville, each
of these has done something to the eternal praise and memory of
these woods. Even at the very worst of times, even when the
picturesque was anathema in the eyes of all Persons of Taste, the
forest still preserved a certain reputation for beauty. It was in
1730 that the Abbe Guilbert published his Historical Description of
the Palace, Town, and Forest of Fontainebleau. And very droll it
is to see him, as he tries to set forth his admiration in terms of
what was then permissible. The monstrous rocks, etc., says the
Abbe 'sont admirees avec surprise des voyageurs qui s'ecrient
aussitot avec Horace: Ut mihi devio rupee et vacuum nemus mirari
libet.' The good man is not exactly lyrical in his praise; and you
see how he sets his back against Horace as against a trusty oak.
Horace, at any rate, was classical. For the rest, however, the
Abbe likes places where many alleys meet; or which, like the Belle-
Etoile, are kept up 'by a special gardener,' and admires at the
Table du Roi the labours of the Grand Master of Woods and Waters,
the Sieur de la Falure, 'qui a fait faire ce magnifique endroit.'
But indeed, it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes
a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that
quality of the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so
wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. Disappointed men,
sick Francis Firsts and vanquished Grand Monarchs, time out of mind
have come here for consolation. Hither perplexed folk have retired
out of the press of life, as into a deep bay-window on some night
of masquerade, and here found quiet and silence, and rest, the
mother of wisdom. It is the great moral spa; this forest without a
fountain is itself the great fountain of Juventius. It is the best
place in the world to bring an old sorrow that has been a long
while your friend and enemy; and if, like Beranger's your gaiety
has run away from home and left open the door for sorrow to come
in, of all covers in Europe, it is here you may expect to find the
truant hid. With every hour you change. The air penetrates
through your clothes, and nestles to your living body. You love
exercise and slumber, long fasting and full meals. You forget all
your scruples and live a while in peace and freedom, and for the
moment only. For here, all is absent that can stimulate to moral
feeling. Such people as you see may be old, or toil-worn, or
sorry; but you see them framed in the forest, like figures on a
painted canvas; and for you, they are not people in any living and
kindly sense. You forget the grim contrariety of interests. You
forget the narrow lane where all men jostle together in
unchivalrous contention, and the kennel, deep and unclean, that
gapes on either hand for the defeated. Life is simple enough, it
seems, and the very idea of sacrifice becomes like a mad fancy out
of a last night's dream.
Your ideal is not perhaps high, but it is plain and possible. You
become enamoured of a life of change and movement and the open air,
where the muscles shall be more exercised than the affections.
When you have had your will of the forest, you may visit the whole
round world. You may buckle on your knapsack and take the road on
foot. You may bestride a good nag, and ride forth, with a pair of
saddle-bags, into the enchanted East. You may cross the Black
Forest, and see Germany wide-spread before you, like a map, dotted
with old cities, walled and spired, that dream all day on their own
reflections in the Rhine or Danube. You may pass the spinal cord
of Europe and go down from Alpine glaciers to where Italy extends
her marble moles and glasses her marble palaces in the midland sea.
You may sleep in flying trains or wayside taverns. You may be
awakened at dawn by the scream of the express or the small pipe of
the robin in the hedge. For you the rain should allay the dust of
the beaten road; the wind dry your clothes upon you as you walked.
Autumn should hang out russet pears and purple grapes along the
lane; inn after inn proffer you their cups of raw wine; river by
river receive your body in the sultry noon. Wherever you went warm
valleys and high trees and pleasant villages should compass you
about; and light fellowships should take you by the arm, and walk
with you an hour upon your way. You may see from afar off what it
will come to in the end - the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond,
consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near touch of
human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an outcast. And yet it
will seem well - and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem
the best - to break all the network bound about your feet by birth
and old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of
phosphates to and fro, in town country, until the hour of the great
dissolvent.
Or, perhaps, you will keep to the cover. For the forest is by
itself, and forest life owns small kinship with life in the dismal
land of labour. Men are so far sophisticated that they cannot take
the world as it is given to them by the sight of their eyes.
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