Nothing Has Ever
Transpired To Clear Up The Mystery; It May Be They Were Automata;
Or It May Be (And
This is the theory to which I lean myself) that
this is all another chapter of Heine's 'Gods in Exile';
That the
upright old man with the eyebrows was no other than Father Jove,
and the young dragoon with the taste for music either Apollo or
Mars.
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.
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