The Vieux Château was made use of by the great Napoleon as a sort of a barracks, and again as a prison, but has since been restored according to the original plans of the architect Ducercen, who, under François I., was to have carried it to completion.
Once St. Germain was the home of royalty and all the gaiety of the court life of the Louis, and once again it was on the eve of becoming the fashionable Paris suburb, but now it is the resort of “trippers,” and its château, or what was left of it after the vandalism of the eighteenth century, is a sad ruin, though the view from its heights is as lovely as ever—that portion which remains being but an aggravation, when one recalls the glories that once were. Save the Vieux Château, all that is left is the lovely view. Paris-wards one sees a panorama—a veritable vol-d’oiseaux—of the slender, silvery loops of the Seine as it bends around Port Marly, Argenteuil, Courbevoie, St. Denis, and St. Cloud; while in the dimmest of the dim distance the Eiffel Tower looms all its ugliness up into the sky, and the domed heights of Montmartre and the Buttes Chaumont look really beautiful—which they do not on closer view.
The height of St. Germain itself—the ville and the château—is not so very great, and it certainly is not giddy, which most of its frequenters, for one reason or another, are; but its miserable pavé is the curse of all automobilists, and the sinuous road which ascends from the Pont du Pecq is now “rushed,” up and down, by motor-cars, to the joy of the native, when one gets stalled, as they frequently do, and to the danger to life and limb of all other road-users and passers-by.
In all of the Valois cycle, “la chasse” plays an important part in the pleasure of the court and the noblesse. The forests in the neighbourhood of Paris are numerous and noted.
FORÊT DE VILLERS-COTTERETS BOIS DE VINCENNES BOIS DE BOULOGNE
At Villers-Cotterets, Dumas’ birthplace, is the Forêt de Villers-Cotterets, a dependence of the Valois establishment at Crépy.
Bondy, Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Vincennes, and Rambouillet are all mentioned, and are too familiar to even casual travellers to warrant the inclusion of detailed description here.
Next to Fontainebleau, whose present-day fame rests with the artists of the Barbizon school, who have perpetuated its rocks and trees, and St. Germain, which is mostly revered for the past splendour of its château, Rambouillet most frequently comes to mind.