Bit by bit one discovers, lost in the modern prosperity of the place, here and there a souvenir of the more illustrious past. Here and there, on the limits of the town, a towered wall rises in some private garden, and we recognize a fragment
of the fortifications raised under Joan of Arc. Certain roads in the forest were planned and laid out by Francis the First. Then there is the city gate, built by Philibert Delorme in 1552, with the initials of Henry and Diana interlaced. A few old houses still remain from the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, and among them that “Hôtel des Rats” where Henri IV. lived with Gabrielle d’Estrées in 1591. There are one or two old churches, too much restored. And then, of course, there is the great uninteresting palace, the very twin of the Palais Royal, which Gabriel built for Louis XV., and which we remember for the sake of the two Napoleons.
The charm, the attraction, of Compiègne is elsewhere. The forest here is beautiful as Fontainebleau. True, here are none of the wild romantic deserts, the piled crags hoary with juniper, the narrow gorges, and sudden summer vistas of Fontainebleau. The trees themselves have a different character. We find few of those great gnarled and hollow giants whose twisted arms make such uncanny shadows towards sunset in the Bas-Bréau. Here the oaks shoot up to an inconceivable height erect and branchless until they meet at last in a roof of verdure just tinged with April rose and gold. If Fontainebleau reminds us of a comedy of Shakespeare’s, Compiègne has the noble and ordered beauty, the heroic sentiment of Racine. What solemn arches and avenues of beeches; what depths of forest widening into unexpected valleys, rippling in meadow-grass, where the hamlet clusters round its ruined abbey; what magical lakes and waters interchained, where the wooded hills shine bright in doubled beauty! Ah! Fontainebleau, after all, is a blind poet: the forest is ignorant of lake and river. But Compiègne has the Oise and the Aisne and the Automne. Compiègne has its lakes and tarns, and pools innumerable, its seven and twenty limpid brooks, its wells and ripples in every valley-bottom. The loose soil, rich with this continual irrigation, teems with flowers. The seal of Solomon waves above the hosts of lily of the valley. The wood-strawberry and wild anemone enamel the grass with their pale stars. Here and there on the sandier slopes a deep carpet of bluebells, or at the water’s edge a brilliant embroidery of kingcups, give point to the sweet monotony of white and green, which vibrates from the flowers in the grass to the flowering may-bushes, to the acacias only half in blossom, and thence more faintly to the lady birch and beech with gleaming trunks and delicate foliage. White and green appear again in the wide sheets of water amid the shimmering woods. So I shall always think of the wood of Compiègne as of some paradise, too perfect for violent hue and passionate colour—some Eden haunted only by the souls of virgins, sweet with all fresh pure scents, white with white flowers, and green with the delicate trembling green of April leaves.
VI
Where shall we go to-day? There are many lovely drives in the forest. Champlieu has its Roman camp, its antique theatre and temple; Morienval its abbey church with the three Norman towers, St. Nicolas its priory, St. Pierre its ruins, St. Jean its marvellous old trees, and Ste. Perrine its lakes where the deer come to die. Shall I confess that we know these beauties still by rumour only? For we went first of all by the foot of Mont St. Mard to the hamlet of the old mill, and round the lakes of La Rouillie to Pierrefonds. And on the morrow, when we set out for Champlieu or St. Jean, after the first mile, we would cry to the driver, “Go back, and take us the same drive as yesterday.” And so three times we drove past the Vieux Moulin.
This is a sad confession. But, reader, if ever you visit Compiègne, go last to Pierrefonds, round by the Vieux Moulin, or, however long you stay, you will never see the rest.
VII
Let us set out again for the Vieux Moulin! We are soon deep in woods of oak and beech. We pass the stately avenues of the Beaux Monts; a steeper height towers above us. See, how wonderful is this deep-green glen, where the oaks rise sheer a hundred feet and more from the sheet of lily of the valley at their feet! The picturesque declivity of the dell, the beautiful growth of the trees, the whiteness and sweetness and profusion of the flowers, the something delicate, lofty, and serious about this landscape, makes a rare impression amid the opulence of April. Our glade slopes downward from the base of Mont St. Mard; at its further extremity begins the valley of the Vieux Moulin.