The parterre before the palace is cut off from the forest of Saint Germain by three ornate iron gates. It was relaid, a transformation from designs originally conceived in 1676, by Le Notre, modified in 1750 and much reduced in size and beauty in the nineteenth century, though later enlarged by taking three hectares of ground from the forest and turning them into the accepted form of an English garden.
A peninsula of a superficial area of over ten thousand acres snugly enfolded in one of the great horseshoe bends of the Seine contains the Forêt de Saint Germain. A line drawn across the neck of the peninsula from Saint Germain to Poissy, following the Route de Poissy, completely cuts off this tongue of land which is as wild and wooded to-day as in the times of Francis, the Henris and the Louis.
The routes and allées of the forest are traced with regularity and precision, and historians have written them down as of a length of nearly four hundred leagues, a statement which a glance at any map of the forest will well substantiate.
High upon its plateau sits this historic wildwood, for the most part of a soil dry and sandy, with here and there some great mamelon (Druidical or Pagan, as the case may be) rising somewhat above the average level. Francis I, huntsman and lover of art and nature, did much to preserve this great forest, and Louis XIV in his time developed its system of roads and paths, "chiefly to make hunting easy," says history, though it is difficult to follow this. At all events the forest remains to-day the most extensive unspoiled breathing-spot of its class near Paris.
Within this maze of paths and alleys are many famed historic spots, the Chêne Saint Fiacre, the Croix de Noailles, the Croix Saint Simon, the Croix du Main (erected in 1709 in honour of the son of Louis XIV), the Étoile des Amazones, the Patte d'Oie, the Chêne du Capitaine and many more which are continually referred to in the history of the palace, the forest of Saint Germain-en-Laye, and of the Abbaye de Poissy.
The forest is not wholly separated from the mundane world for occasionally a faint echo of the Rouen railway is heard, a toot from a river tug-boat bringing coal up-river to Paris, the strident notes of automobile horns, or that of a hooting steam-tram which scorches along the principal roadway over which state coaches of kings and courtiers formerly rolled. The contrast is not particularly offensive, but the railway threatens to make further inroads, so one hardly knows the future that may be in store for the patriarch oaks and elms and chestnuts which make up this secular wildwood. Their ages may not in all cases approach those of the great Fontainebleau trees, and in point of fact the forest is by no means as solitary, nor ever was. One of the most celebrated, certainly one of the most spectacular, duels of history took place in the park at Saint Germain-en-Laye.
Gui Chabot de Jarnac lived a prodigal and profligate life at the expense—it was said—of the favours of the Duchesse d'Étampes. The dauphin, Henri, making an accusation, deemed wholly uncalled for, a "duel judiciaire" took place, with La Châtaigneraie as the dauphin's substitute as adversary of de Jarnac who sought no apology but combat.
It was because Henri meantime had become king and issued his first Letters Patent to his council concerning the "duel judiciaire," whereby he absolved himself of the right to partake, that he appointed his dear friend François de Vivonne, "Seigneur de la Châtaigneraie," to play the rôle for him.
Unfortunately the young man could not justify by victory the honour of his king and before the monarch and the assembled court he was laid low by his adversary.
This was one of the last of the "duels judiciaires" in France. What Saint Louis and Philippe-le-Bel had vainly sought to suppress, the procedure having cost at least a hundred thousand livres, was practically accomplished by Henri II by a stroke of the pen.