The Automobilist Abroad

by M. F. Mansfield

The most we would do was to admire the park and the ramifications of its paths and alleys which dwindled imperceptibly into the great Forêt de Chantilly itself. The forest is one of those vast tracts of wildwood which are so plentifully besprinkled all over France. Their equals are not known elsewhere, for they are crossed and recrossed in all directions by well-kept carriage roads where automobilists will be troubled neither by dust nor glaring sunlight. They are the very ideals of roads, the forest roads of France, and their length is many thousands of kilometres.

Senlis is but eight kilometres from Chantilly. We had no reason for going there at all, except to have a look at its little-known, but very beautiful, cathedral, and to get on the real road to the north.

We spent the night at Senlis, for we had become fatigued with the horrible pavé of the early morning, the sightseeing of the tourist order which we had done at Chantilly, and the eternal dodging of race-horses being exercised all through the streets of the town and the roads of the forest.

"Monsieur descend-il à l'Hôtel du Grand Monarque?" asked a butcher's boy of us, as we stopped the automobile beneath the cathedral tower to get our bearings. He was probably looking for a little commission on our hotel-bill for showing us the way; but, after all, this is a legitimate enough proposition. We told him frankly no; that we were looking for the Hôtel des Arènes; but that he knew nothing of. Another, more enterprising, did, and we drove our automobile into the court of a tiny little commercial-looking hotel, and were soon strolling about the town free from further care for the day. The hotel was ordinary enough, neither good nor bad, comme 'ci, comme ça, the French would call it,—but they made no objection to getting up at six o'clock the next morning and making us fresh coffee which was a dream of excellence. This is a good deal in its favour, for the coffee of the ordinary French country hotel—in the north, in particular—is fearfully and wonderfully made, principally of chicory.

Sentiment would be served, and from Senlis we struck across forty kilometres to what may be called the Dumas Country, Crépy-en-Valois and Villers-Cotterets. Here was a little-trodden haunt which all lovers of romance and history would naturally fall in love with.

Crépy is a snug, conservative little town where life goes on in much the same way that it did in the days when Alexandre Dumas was a clerk here in a notary's office, before he descended upon the Parisian world of letters. His "Mémoires" tell the story of his early experiences here in his beloved Valois country. It is a charming biographical work, Dumas's "Mémoires," and it is a pity it is not better known to English readers. Dumas tells of his journey by road, from the town of his birth, Villers-Cotterets, to Crépy, with his world's belongings done up in a handkerchief on a stick, "in bulk not more grand than the luggage of a Savoyard when he leaves his native mountain home."

Crépy has a delightfully named and equally excellent hotel in the "Trois Pigeons," and one may eat of real country fare and be happy and forget all about the ham and eggs and bad whiskey of Chantilly in the contemplation of omelettes and chickens and fresh, green salads, such as only the country innkeeper in France knows how to serve. Crépy has a château, too, a relic of the days when the town was the capital of a petit gouvernement belonging to a younger branch of the royal family of France in the fourteenth century. The château is not quite one's ideal of what a great mediæval château should be, but it is sufficiently imposing to give a distinction to the landscape and is in every way a very representative example of the construction of the time.

The great Route Nationale to the north runs through Crépy to-day, as did the Route Royale of the days of the Valois. It is eighteen kilometres from Crépy to Villers-Cotterets, Dumas's birthplace. The great romancer describes it with much charm and correctness in the early pages of "The Taking of the Bastile." He calls it "a little city buried in the shade of a vast park planted by François I. and Henri II." It is a place ever associated with romance and history, and, to add further to its reputation, it is but a few kilometres away from La Ferte-Milon, where Racine was born, and only eight leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.

We had made up our minds to breathe as much of the spirit and atmosphere of Villers-Cotterets as was possible in a short time, and accordingly we settled down for the night at the Hôtel Alexandre Dumas. The name of the hotel is unusual. There may be others similar, but the writer does not recall them at this moment. It was not bad, and, though entitled to be called a grand establishment, it was not given to pomposity or pretence, and we parted with regret, for we had been treated most genially by the proprietor and his wife, and served by a charming young maid, who, we learned, was the daughter of the house. It was all in the family, and because of that everything was excellently done.

There are fragments of a royal château here, begun by François I. in one of his building manias. His salamanders and the three crescents of Diane de Poitiers still decorate its walls, and accordingly it is a historical shrine of the first rank, though descended in these later days to use as a poorhouse.