In these
dark days, when the watch on the church steeple saw the smoke of
burning villages on the sky-line, or a clump of spears and
fluttering pensions drawing nigh across the plain, these good folk
gat them up, with all their household gods, into the wood, whence,
from some high spur, their timid scouts might overlook the coming
and going of the marauders, and see the harvest ridden down, and
church and cottage go up to heaven all night in flame. It was but
an unhomely refuge that the woods afforded, where they must abide
all change of weather and keep house with wolves and vipers. Often
there was none left alive, when they returned, to show the old
divisions of field from field. And yet, as times went, when the
wolves entered at night into depopulated Paris, and perhaps De Retz
was passing by with a company of demons like himself, even in these
caves and thickets there were glad hearts and grateful prayers.
Once or twice, as I say, in the course of the ages, the forest may
have served the peasant well, but at heart it is a royal forest,
and noble by old associations. These woods have rung to the horns
of all the kings of France, from Philip Augustus downwards. They
have seen Saint Louis exercise the dogs he brought with him from
Egypt; Francis I. go a-hunting with ten thousand horses in his
train; and Peter of Russia following his first stag.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173