is a great avenue flanked with high
overhanging shade trees known as the Allee Racine. It gets its name from
the fact that the dramatist was wont to take his walks abroad in this
direction and woo the muse while he was a guest of Madame de Maintenon.

CHAPTER XIX

RAMBOUILLET AND ITS FOREST

[Illustration: Chateau de Rambouillet]

Rambouillet is one of the most famous of the minor royal chateaux of
France. Built under the first of the monarchies, in the midst of the
vast forest of Yveline, it has always formed a part of the national
domain. Even now, under Republican France, it is still the scene of the
hunts organized for visiting monarchs, and, within the last half dozen
years alone, the monarchs of Spain and Belgium, Italy and England have
shot hares and stags and pheasants in company with a Republican
president.

The occasions have lacked the picturesque costumes of the disciples of
Saint Hubert in other times; but the huntsman still winds his horn to
the same traditional tune and the banquets given in the chateau on such
occasions are, in no small measure, an echo of what has gone before.

It was in the old chateau of Rambouillet that Francis I died. In the
month of March, 1547, Francis, coming from Chambord in the south,
crossed the "accursed bridge" and arrived at the foot of the ivy-grown
donjon which one sees to-day, the last remaining relic of the mediaeval
fortress. For a year the monarch had led a wandering life, revisiting
all the favourite haunts of his kingdom, and, though scarce turned
fifty, was prematurely aged and gray.

He was lifted tenderly from his royal coach, and by the winding stair,
carried slowly to his apartments on the second floor, overlooking the
three canals and the "accursed bridge" and the tangled forest beyond.

Jacques d'Angennes, to whose ancestors Rambouillet one day belonged,
acted as host to his royal master and cared for him as a brother, but
Francis was dispirited, and growing weaker every moment. He complained
bitterly of the death of his favourite son from the plague, and of that
of the gay monarch across the channel, his old friend, Henry VIII of
England.

He was restless and wished to move on to Saint Germain, but his
condition made that impossible. After a feeble attempt to rouse himself
for a hunt in the forest, he took to his bed again, with the admonition
to his friend d'Angennes, who never left him: "I am dying, send for my
son, Henri."

The prince