Observe that wherever the forest assumes an aspect of grandeur, either through the extent of its vista or the loftiness of its trees, it resembles all other forests. The truly magnificent towering beeches of Bas-Bréau seem to me, in spite of their stately bearing and smooth shining bark, a thing I have seen elsewhere. The place is original only where it is low, gloomy rock; where it bears evidence of the struggle of the sandstone, the twisted tree, the perseverance of the elm, or the courageous effort of the oak.
Many persons have remained here fascinated and enthralled. Coming only for a month, they have lingered until death. To the enchanting scene they have addressed the lover's speech to his beloved:—"Let me live, let me die with thee!"—Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens.
It is a curious fact that every individual finds here what he most delights in: Saint Louis, the Thébaïd of which he dreamed; while Henry IV., who cared for nothing but pleasure, exclaimed, "My delicious deserts!" The poor mystical exile, Kosciusko,[D] felt the attraction of his Lithuanian forests, and here took root. A man of stone, of flint,—the Breton Maud'huys,—saw here the image of his native Brittany, and built up, stone upon stone, the most original book written upon Fontainebleau.
[D] The Polish hero who unavailingly struggled to secure his country's freedom, but was crushed by the power of Russia:—
"And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell!"
It is a region of power, which you cannot enter with impunity. Some persons lose in it their wits, undergo a strange metamorphosis, and like Bottom, in Windsor Forest, see themselves adorned with ass's ears. For the forest is a person: has its lovers and its detractors—some curse it, others bless it. A foolish dreamer wrote of it, on a rock near Nemours, "I will possess thee, cruel stepmother!" And her lover, the old soldier Denecourt, who bestowed on her all that he had in the world, called her "My adored!"[E]
[E] It is impossible to be grateful enough for all that M. Denecourt has done; he has rendered the place accessible by everybody, even the poorest, who are no longer in need of guides.—Author.
Some one has said to me: "Is she not the Viola of Shakespeare, with her dubious but always charming aspect; now a maiden, and now a cavalier? Or his young page, Rosalind, after she appears as a laughing damsel?" No: the contrasts are much greater.
For the fairy here has countless faces. She has the cold Alpine plants, and yet she shelters the most delicate flora. Austere in winter and spring, she terrifies you with the rugged rocks which, in autumn, she conceals under a crimson mantle of foliage. She has at her disposal, for a daily change, the delicate tissue of floating gauze which Lantara never fails to spread over it in all his pictures. With her belt of forest she arrests on every side the light mists, and gaily weaves them into veils, and scarfs, and girdles; into all kinds of delicate disguises. You would think the heavy masses of sandstone invariable; yet they change their aspects, their colours—I was going to say their form—every hour. The little chain, for example, known as the Rock of Avon, had saluted us in the morning with the breath of the heather, the cheeriest ray of the dawn, an enchanting aurora which tinted with rose hues the sandstone; all nature seemed to smile, and to harmonize with the innocent studies of a devout and poetic soul. When we returned there in the evening, the capricious fairy had changed everything. Those pines, which had welcomed us under their airy canopy, had suddenly grown wild and fierce, and resounded with strange noises, with lamentations of sinister augury. Those shrubs, which in the morning had graciously invited the white robe to pause beside them and gather their berries or flowers, now seemed to conceal in their copses an undefinable something of ill omen—robbers, it might be, or sorcerers! But greater still the transformation in those rocks, which had courteously received us, and bidden us be seated. Is it the evening, or is it a coming storm, which has changed them? I know not; but there they are, metamorphosed into gloomy sphinxes, into elephants prostrate on the earth, into mammoths, and other monsters of the old worlds which have ceased to exist. They are now at rest, it is true; but are they not about to rise? However this may be, the evening comes on apace; let us advance. My wife presses close to my arm.