i From The Edinburgh Review. lilies of France, the balls of the Medicis, the famous "girony of eight" of Navarre. Here, also, are the monograms of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, of Louis XV. and of Marie Antoinette. Here, finally, is the imperial bee of Napoleon 1. No public building in France appeals to the historical imagination more eloquently than the palace of Fontainebleau. None awakens so rich and varied a group of striking associations; none is so thickly haunted with memories of the past; none is tenanted by In the course of centuries the rude the ghosts of so brilliant a crowd of fa- hunting-lodge of early kings, the donmous men and women. It is a docu- jon-keep which stood in the centre of ment to which twenty kings have set the chers déserts of St. Louis, was their sign-manuals, a chronicle in stone transformed into an enchanted palace, of the history of France, a dumb yet surpassing in its beauty the fabled eloquent preacher of the mutability of abode of Morgana, which became in human greatness. turn the Chez Soy of Francis I., the belle et délicieuse résidence of Anne of Austria, the maison des siècles of Napoleon I. During the passage of years it has been the favorite home of kings and queens, the birthplace of princes, the refuge of exiled sovereigns, the prison of a pope and a king of Spain, the bower of royal lovers, the scene of the triumphs and defeats which constitute the glory and the pathos of French history, the stage on which the actors in its brilliant comedies or ghastly tragedies have played their striking parts. Successive sovereigns from 1137 to 1870-from Louis le Gros to Napoleon III.-have enriched it with memorials of their rule. Within its precincts, by ancient custom, the royal wives of monarchs have brought into the world the heirs to the throne. Upon its buildings the uncrowned queens of France from Diane de Poitiers to Madame de Pompadour - have lavished their luxury, their caprice, and their extravagance. The ermine of Anne of Bretagne, the porcupine of Louis XII., the pierced swan of Claude of Lorraine, which are so conspicuous on the walls Nor is Fontainebleau content to reand ceilings of Blois, are absent from cord only the rise and fall of dynasties. Fontainebleau. But, beginning with Its interest is not exclusively historical. the salamander of Francis I., there is It is artistic also. Seven centuries of scarcely a king, a queen, or a mistress, changing taste have left their mark whose memory is not preserved in the upon its walls. It is a mosaic of stone buildings of the palace. Here is the and colors, into which are dovetailed monogram of Henry II., so constructed the various stages in the history and that it may be read as that of himself progress of French art. Upon its walls and Catherine de Medicis or Diane de some of the greatest of French archiPoitiers; here are Diane's crescent tects, sculptors, and painters have moons, her stags, her leverets, her inscribed their work. From Fontainebows and arrows; here is the S and bleau emanated the first great artistic arrow, which commemorates la belle movement in France. It would be unGabrielle with a pun upon her surname of Estrées, and by its side is the monogram of her royal lover, Henry IV., and his wife, Marie de Medicis. Here, again and again repeated, are the 11. Le Trésor des Merveilles de la Maison Royale de Fontainebleau. Par le R. P. F. Pierre Dan. Paris: 1642. 2. Le Palais de Fontainebleau. Par Jean-Joseph Champollion-Figeac. Paris: 1866. 3. The Anglican Church Magazine. No. LIV. (March, 1891.) London. just to ignore the early efforts of Louis XII. and his minister, Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, or to depreciate the native genius displayed in the château of Blois. But the impulse given to art by the brilliant group of Italian artists which Francis I. gathered round him at Fontainebleau by Rosso, Primaticcio, Niccolo dell' Abbate, and many others was as great as it was indisputably general. From the Ecole de Fontaine bleau Claude Lorraine derived his ical light, and Poussin drew his tragic note. And from the sixteenth century onwards, each successive step in the glory or the decadence of French painting, architecture, or sculpture, is chronicled in the buildings or the decoration of the palace. Their records carry us from the Italian Renaissance of Franeis I., in which, in the first flush of their inspiration, the newly imported classic elements conquered the Gothic forms of native growth, to the pure classicism of Henry II.; from the bas- As the first great movement of French tard Renaissance of Henry IV. to the art emanated from the palace, so the flowing lines and wealth of color by last great movement has found its which the artists of Louis XIII. de- source in the forest, which has inspired parted from the antique model; from the genius of Millet, Rousseau, Diaz, the pompous emphasis of Louis XIV. Corot, and the modern Barbizon school to the charming, but capricious, grace of French painters. The simple poetry of Louis XV.; from the classic art of of natural life is the discovery and the the Empire to the Gothic revival of the revelation of its founders. It was not Restoration. the shy grace of a Dryad, nor the spirHistorically, and artistically, Fon- itual ecstasy of a Madonna, nor the tainebleau is the jewel of French pal- smile of a Bacchante, which was their aces. And the brilliance of the gem is inspiration, but the mystery of the enhanced by the unrivalled beauty of woods, the savage gloom of a forest, the setting. The frame is worthy of the rude pathos of humble toil. It was the picture. The forest stands alone in the forest that Corot brought to peramong the forests of France in its di- fection his art of arresting the momenversity. Every variety of tree-pop-tary changes of nature, and of blending lars and chestnuts, maple and birch, the green of leaves and grass with the oaks and junipers - flourishes in abun- grey of his fleecy clouds; here, too, dance. The wild and savage scenery Rousseau acquired his emotional appreof Salvator Rosa alternates with the hension of landscape, and Diaz bestowed calm and peaceful landscape of Claude on the glades of sylvan scenery the Lorraine. Stonehenges and Carnacs glow of color in which his Spanish inof moss-colored rock, rich-colored pla-stinct delighted. And, above all, it was tières, or ridges of sandstone, bare, on the outskirts of the forest that the naked, boldly outlined hills, present Homer of rural life but a Homer in abrupt contrasts with tree-clad slopes, patois caught, and fixed upon his tranquil plains, quiet pools, like the canvas, the cadenced, rhythmic moveMare aux fées, or the Mare aux ser- ment of the sower, and the painful, pents, and turfy sweeps, such as labored effort of the overladen woodthat near the woods of Bas Bréaux, where Pan himself might be content to shepherd his flocks. Here are masses of curiously scaled grey stone, resembling primeval lizard-like monsters, petrified as they approached their prey; while, above and around them, twisting, writhing, and contorting into fantastic shapes, rises a forest growth of junipers, which look like the wild figures of a corybantic dance. Here, too, are mag- secular" oaks - "green-robed senators of the woods "— whose forms may well have sheltered Charlemagne, as popular tradition asserts, or concealed the dark spectral form of the "Grand Veneur," or shaded the velvet cheek of Diane de Poitiers. And, dotted here and there among the trees, gleam the white tents of the soldiers, who make of the forest a camp of exercise, and whose blue and red uniforms, cooking fires, and picketed horses give life and color to its sombre depths. -- cutter, or translated into form and colors the terrible page in which La Bruyère describes the hopeless uneventful toil of the French peasant, or revived the pious sensations of his own Norman childhood, when, at declining day, the peasants raise themselves erect from their toil to repeat the "Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ." Fontainebleau sums up in itself the history of the French nation and of French art. It will be possible in the following pages to indicate only a few of the associations which the forest and the palace suggest. The palace owes its existence to the forest. Official exigencies of State dictated the selection of the Louvre, St. Cloud, Versailles, the Tuileries, Vincennes, or St. Germains, as residences of French sovereigns, Chinon, the Windsor of Touraine, which crowns the line of cliffs that rise above the Vienne, was a stronghold that defied the English invader. Bourges afforded a refuge to the roitelet from his powerful rival, the king of England. Blois and Amboise and Angers were strongholds that command the passages of the Loire. But Fontainebleau was emphatically a hunting-lodge. The ancient province of the Gâtinais (Pagus Wastinensis) on the left bank of the Seine was united to the French crown by Philip I. in 1068. Within its limits was situated the ancient forest of Bieria, which had become proverbial in the Middle Ages for the size and beauty of its trees. In the "Roman de la Rose" a hero bears a lance, the handle of which, cut in the forest of Thuerie, was so strong that Il n'en croît nulle telle en Bière. The whole country took the name of Bière, and the word still survives in official documents and in the local nomenclature of the Department of Seineet-Marne. But the name of the more modern palace was gradually extended to the forest, and entirely superseded its ancient title. first of our reign, there being present in our palace those whose names and signatures are subscribed below." The charter, which confirms the foundation of the Abbey of Val-Sainte-Marie in Auvergne, is said to be "actum apud fontem Bleaudi." The "fons Bleaudi" became Fontainebleau. But the origin of the term is lost in the mists of antiquity. Ancient antiquaries, delighting in that guess-work which threw discredit on their learning, exercised their ingenuity in explanations. Some invented an eponymous hero; others argued that the word commemorated the sagacity of the dog Blaut which discovered the spring; others traced the name to the clearness of the water, which made a French Calirrhöe of the "Fontaine-belle-cau." All that can be said with certainty is that the etymology of the word is the "Fontem Blialdi," and its meaning "the spring of the mantle;" but the attempt to trace the derivation of the title must be abandoned to the imagination. 2 There existed, then, at Fontainebleau, in the first year of the reign of Louis VII., a royal palace, which was capable of holding the king and all the great officers of his court, and which was, with certainty, built at least in the time of his predecessor, Louis VI., called "the Fat." Nothing more unlike the modern palace can be imagined than this mediæval donjon. Those who are familiar with the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges know how, three centuries later, defensive strength was still at least as much the aim of builders as comfort or splendor; on the Before the year 1068 it would be vain inner side a palace, it is on the outer to seek for any mention of the palace side a fortification. Fontainebleau in of Fontainebleau. Between that date the days of Louis VII. was a fortiand 1137 the first royal residence was fied castle, a gloomy keep occupying built. In the latter year occurs the the site of the present Cour Ovale, first record of the palace, though that flanked by towers, protected by lofty record in itself affords a proof of its an- walls, strengthened by a moat, and apterior existence. A charter of Louis proached by a drawbridge. Few traces VII. is extant which closes with this protocol in Latin: "Given at FontaineBléaud, in public, in the year 1137, the 1 In Low Latin, Bieria, or Bierria, means a plain; hence the Bieria Sylva means the forest of the plain. 2 The word" Blialdus," "Blaudus,"" Bliaudus," and other analogous forms, is frequently met with Du Cange gives its meaning as "vestis species," and illustrates its use in Old French from the mediaval romances — e.g., "De mult riche bliaut fut la dame parée," "bliaut de samis," "bliaut de fourrure." in Low Latin documents. remain of the early fortress, but the ex- | viève of Paris addressed to William de isting buildings were erected on its Bierria, who had left the religious house foundations, and its form is preserved of St. Euverte of Orleans to occupy the in the irregular shape of the courtyard. newly founded cell in the forest of Bière Within the baily of the fortress stood or Fontainebleau. the chapel of St. Saturnin, bishop and martyr of Toulouse, finished, as the inscription in the subterranean crypt states, by Louis VII. in 1169. Thus the feudal stronghold of the Cour Ovale formed the nucleus round which gathered, at different epochs, the present magnificent and heterogeneous structure. Any one who passes from part to part of the great building, and asks himself "What happened here ?" “What king built this or that portion of the palace?" "What effect did his life or death produce upon France?" will gain a truer and more real knowledge of the history of the country than can be derived from the reading of books. It was to Fontainebleau that Philip Augustus returned from the Crusades, or in the intervals of the war which he waged against Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Here, in 1191, he celebrated Christmas in the company of a brilliant throng of nobles with splendid festivities, before he offered thanks for his return at the shrine of the bienheureux St. Denis. Here, six years later, he signed a charter, which conveyed the hermitage of Franchard to the monastery of St. Euverte of Orleans. The site of the lonely cave, hollowed in the rock, its floor worn by the knees of the hermits, who lived a life of prayer, surrounded by fierce beasts of prey or still more savage human beings, is now a café thronged with pleasure-seekers. The contrast between a feudal donjon of Louis VI. and the palace of Fontainebleau as it exists to-day sums up the history of France. The advice of Adolphus Joanne to the modern tourist, compared with the counsel of Abbot Stephen to the solitary recluse of Franchard, epitomizes, as it were, another aspect of the passage of time from the twelfth to the nineteenth century. Listen to the words which the abbot of St. Gene1 The translation is taken from the Anglican Church Magazine for March, 1891. Weep for thyself; weep for thy neighbor; weep also for the Lord. Weep for thyself, reviewing thy past years in bitterness of spirit. Weep for thy neighbor, that is for all who live or are dead, in the faith of Christ. Weep also for the Lord, being weary of this present life, and desiring that which is eternal. Let thy first tear be shed, that God may remember no more against thee the wilful, or unwitting, sins of thy youth; thy second, that the living may and that the dead may rest in peace; thy eschew evil and persevere in good works, third, that thou mayest shortly be rid of the body of this death, and be with Christ, crying, "Alas, that my sojourn here is so long!" Let thy first tear, my brother, be a tear of penitence and contrition; thy second a tear of compassion and pity; thy third a tear of faith and thanksgiving. From prayer turn then to reading, and from reading to meditation, that so thou mayest mark, learn, and inwardly digest what thou hast read, and store it in the garner of thy memory. But take heed lest, by overmuch reading, thine eyes be dimmed, or thy brain be made to reel. Be moderate in thy reading, and afterwards neglect not to walk to and fro in thy cell, or to go forth into thy garden and rest thy failing eyes by the sight of the green herbs that grow therein — few and scanty though they be— or by the contemplation of thy beehives, that so the bees may be to thee for an ensample and a consolation. Among such diversities of occupation, thou shalt regard of the joys of heaven. the roughness of the desert as the foretaste As the centuries advance, Fontainebleau is brought more and more closely into direct contact with the general stream of French history. Especially is it associated with the glories of St. Louis, of Francis I., of Henry IV., and Napoleon I. Four of the greatest of French monarchs made Fontainebleau their favorite residence, and lavished their treasures upon its walls. Fontainebleau was the centre of the chers déserts of St. Louis, endeared to him not only by the pleasures of the chase, but by the memory of his mother, Blanche of Castille, who passed much | hospital by the side of the castle, and of her time in the neighborhood. On within its walls, for the sick of the the banks of the Loing, by the road to neighboring country. He entrusted it Nemours, are still to be seen the vast ruins of her favorite Castle of Grez. Her son shared his mother's love for the forest. St. Louis was the first great builder at Fontainebleau. Under the shadow of the donjon keep, he built the pavilion which still stands, and is still called by his name. Hunting was his favorite pastime. It was probably no accident that the first didactic work on venery was composed in his reign the "Book of King Modus and Queen Racio." He was not always so absorbed in Crusading enterprises, or in dreams of heavenly beauty, as to neglect the delights of the chase. Among the treasures which he brought back from the East were the grey dogs of Tartar race that he introduced into the forest. A lasting monument of his passion for hunting still survives these. Near the village of Bois-le-Roi rises a little hill, the summit of which is crowned by the ruins of the hermitage of St. Louis. The king was separated from his attendants in the ardor of his pursuit of a stag, when he was suddenly attacked by robbers. He blew his horn for assistance, but none came. He was at his last gasp, when his courtiers rode up. In gratitude for his escape he founded a hermitage, and dedicated it to St. Vincent, on whose day (January 22) he was thus rescued from danger. Many scenes in the life of St. Louis are associated with Fontainebleau. It was here that, in 1228, he confirmed the privileges of the University of Paris. Here, too, in 1259, believing himself to be at the point of death, he called his sou to his bedside, and delivered to him one of those exhortations which Bossuet calls the sacred heirlooms of the children of St. Louis. "Son," said he, "I pray thee to make thyself beloved by the people of thy realm. For, verily, I had rather that a Scot should come out of Scotland, and rule the kingdom well and loyally, than that thou shouldest rule it ill and to evil report." The king was restored to health, and, in gratitude for his recovery, founded a to the care of the brethren of the order of the Holy Trinity, commonly called Mathurins. For a time he gave to the brethren the existing chapel of St. Saturnin,1 but afterwards built for their special use the chapel of the Holy Trinity, on the site of which the present chapel is founded. Thus, side by side, Church and State existed within the same walls. In architecture, as well as in politics, the union has produced strange irregularities, which are exemplified, not only in the Cour Ovale at Fontainebleau, but in the Escurial of Spain, the Mafra of Portugal, the Superga of Sardinia. Joinville records the words of St. Louis to his son. The same chronicler relates a trick which the king played upon his courtiers at Fontainebleau. On Christmas eve a procession of courtiers entered the brilliantly lighted chapel of St. Saturnin. The king's custom on that anniversary was to present the officers of the household with fur cloaks, and all wore the royal gift. But Louis had secretly caused a cross to be embroidered in dark silk on the backs of the cloaks, so that, as they passed into the chapel, each man saw the crusading symbol on his neighbor's back. Perplexed and bewildered, they knew not how to interpret the king's purpose. But when St. Louis came forward, himself wearing the cross upon his shoulders, and asked whether they had the heart to tear off the badge and send him to the Holy Land alone, they cried with one voice, "We will follow thee! We will keep the cross !" At Fontainebleau in 1268 Philip the Fair was born. His reign formed a marked era in the history of France. Now was inaugurated the foreign policy of Henry IV. and Richelieu. The strength of feudalism was weakened, the government concentrated, justice 1 On the ruins of this chapel Francis I. built the level with the ground. The older edifice, part of which belongs to the twelfth century, and is said to present Chapel of St. Saturnin, which is raised to a have been consecrated by Archbishop Becket, remains as a crypt. |