The park proper, containing more than twelve hundred hectares, is one of the largest and most thickly wooded in France. Between the parterre and the French and English garden and the park lie the Farm and the Laiterie de la Reine, the caprice of Louis XVI when he would content Marie Antoinette and give her something to think about besides her troubles. Napoleon stripped it of its furnishings to install them, for a great part, at Malmaison, for that other unhappy woman—Josephine. Later, to give pleasure to Marie Louise, he ordered them brought back again to Rambouillet, but it was to Napoleon III that the restoration of this charming conceit was due.
In the neighbourhood of Rambouillet was the famous Chateau de Chasse, or royal shooting-box, which Louis XV was fond of making a place of rendezvous.
On the banks of the Étang de Pourras stood this Chateau de Saint Hubert, named for the patron saint of huntsmen, and within its walls was passed many a happy evening by king and courtiers after a busy day with stag and hound.
The hunt in France was perhaps at the most picturesque phase of its existence at this time. The hunt of to-day is but a pale, though bloody, imitation of the real sport of the days when monarchs and their seigneurs in slashed doublet and hose and velvet cloaks pursued the deer of the forest to his death, and knew not the maitre d'equipage of to-day.
CHAPTER XX
CHANTILLY
Chantilly, because of its royal associations, properly finds its place in every traveller's French itinerary. Not only did Chantilly come to its great glory through royal favour, but in later years the French government has taken it under its wing, the chateau, the stables and the vast park and forest, until the ensemble is to-day as much of a national show place as Versailles or Saint Germain. It is here in the marble halls, where once dwelt the Condés and the Montmorencys, that are held each year the examinations of the French Académie des Beaux Arts. And besides this it is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of tourists who, as a class, for a couple of generations previously, never got farther away from the capital than Saint Cloud.
