On leaving Nemours the road keeps to the west of the Loing, and almost at once enters the Forest of Fontainebleau. Most of the trees are without any beauty, being thin and tall and of an average size. There are no suggestions of the primeval, such as every English forest contains, including even the Londoner’s paradise of Epping. The only feature of this great tree-grown area which is interesting, apart from its associations, is the strange appearance of great lumps of rock, tilted up at curious angles, and sprawling about among the trees in such an odd fashion that in the twilight the forest seems full of giant sloths and other prehistoric beasts!
FONTAINEBLEAU
The town of Fontainebleau stands in the midst of the forest, with the palace and park on the east side.
The palace is open to visitors every day between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
As long ago as 1137 a French king—Louis le Jeune—dated an Act ‘apud fontem Bleaudi.’ François I., that mighty builder of Renaissance palaces, was, however, the real creator of the Fontainebleau of to-day. He planned, and to a considerable extent carried out, a structure he desired to be the finest palace in the world. The Galerie de François I. and that called after and decorated by Henri II. were built by François, and so were the Chapelle de la Sainte Trinité, the Chapelle St. Saturnin, and the magnificent Salon de François I. Henri II., Henri IV., and various other sovereigns carried on the building of the immense pile, Fontainebleau being popular for various reasons, particularly on account of the hunting in the great forest.
Perhaps it is the figure of Napoleon in the midst of the accumulated royal splendours of Fontainebleau that appeals most to the imagination. The young Corsican soldier, transformed into an Emperor, and dwelling with his Empress wife in palaces such as this, causes one to gaze with more than ordinary interest at the sumptuous apartments, with their gilded furnishings, their heavy silken coverings, their thrones, bedsteads, mirrors, and a thousand features, all of which were backgrounds to the short, dark-haired, and clean-shaven man who had put the States of Europe, with one notable exception, into the melting-pot of his ambition. One is shown the little round table upon which ‘the Usurper’ signed his abdication, and the famous horseshoe-shaped staircase where he said good-bye to the weeping soldiers of the Old Guard.
THE ROAD TO MELUN
goes northwards through the forest, and about 8 kilometres from Fontainebleau passes the stone Table du Roi, dated 1723. On emerging from the forest Melun is close at hand.
SECTION XXV
MELUN TO ST. GERMAIN-EN-LAYE,
45¼ MILES
(73 KILOMETRES)