Through and through, Compiègne, its palace, its hotel-de-ville, its forest, is delightful. Old and new huddle close together, and the art nouveau decorations of a branch of a great Parisian department store flank a butcher's stall which looks as though it might have come down from the times when all trading was done in the open air.

Compiègne's origin goes back to the antique. It was originally Compendium, a Roman station situated on the highway between Soissons and Beauvais. A square tower, Cæsar's Tower, gave a military aspect to the walled and fortified station, and evidences are not wanting to-day to suggest with what strength its fortifications were endowed.

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It was here that the first Frankish kings built their dwelling, and here that Pepin-le-Bref received the gracious gift of an organ from the Emperor Constantine, and here, in 833, that an assembly of bishops and nobles deposed Louis-le-Débonnaire.

Charles-le-Chauve received Pope Jean VIII in great pomp in the palace at Compiègne, and it was this Pope who gave absolution to Louis-le-Begue, who died here but a year after, 879. The last of the Carlovingians, Louis V (le-Faineant), died also at Compiègne in 987.

The city is thus shown to have been a favourite place of sojourn for the kings of the Franks, and those of the first and second races. As was but obvious many churchly councils were held here, fourteen were recorded in five centuries, but none of great ecclesiastical or civil purport.

The city first got its charter in 1153, but the Merovingian city having fallen into a sort of galloping decay Saint Louis gave it to the Dominicans in 1260, who here founded, by the orders of the king, a Hotel Dieu which, in part, is the same edifice which performs its original functions to-day.

The first great love of Compiègne was expressed by Charles V, who rebuilt the palace of Charles-le-Chauve in a manner which was far from making it a monumental or artistically disposed edifice. It was originally called the Louvre, from the Latin word opus (l'œuvre), a word which was applied to all the chateaux-forts of these parts. The same monarch did better with the country-houses which he afterwards built at Saint Germain and Vincennes; perhaps by this time he had grown wise in his dealings with architects.

Like all the little towns of the Valois, Compiègne abounds in souvenirs of the Guerre de Cent Ans, Jeanne d'Arc, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I and Napoleon III, and as its monuments attest this glory, so its forest, one of the finest in France, awakens almost as many historical memories.