Royal Palaces and Parks of France

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 1910 Copyright, 1910. By L. C. Page & Company. (INCORPORATED) All rights reserved First Impression, November, 1910 Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
L. C. Page and Company 53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
A thousand years ago, by the rim of a tiny spring, a monk who had avowed himself to the cult of Saint Saturnin, robed, cowled and sandalled, knelt down to say a prayer to his beloved patron saint. Again he came, this time followed by more of his kind, and a wooden cross was planted by the side of the Fontaine Belle Eau, by this time become a place of pious pilgrimage. After the monk came a king, the latter to hunt in the neighbouring forest.
It was this old account of fact, or legend, that led the author and illustrator of this book to a full realization of the wealth of historic and romantic incidents connected with the French royal parks and palaces, incidents which the makers of guidebooks have passed over in favour of the, presumably, more important, well authenticated facts of history which are often the bare recitals of political rises and falls and dull chronologies of building up and tearing down.
Much of the history of France was made in the great national forests and the royal country-houses of the kingdom, but usually it has been only the events of the capital which have been passed in review. To a great extent this history was of the gallant, daring kind, often written in blood, the sword replacing the pen.
At times gayety reigned supreme, and at times it was sadness; but always the pageant was imposing.
The day of pageants has passed, the day when lords and ladies moved through stately halls, when royal equipages hunted deer or boar on royal preserves, when gay cavalcades of solemn cortèges thronged the great French highways to the uttermost frontiers and ofttimes beyond. Those days have passed; but, to one who knows the real France, a ready-made setting is ever at hand if he would depart a little from the beaten paths worn smooth by railway and automobile tourists who follow only the lines of conventional travel.