a moment and take counsel. In view of later events this was
significant; perhaps it was significant at the time, for the king
speedily repented his abdication. It was too late, for he had classed as
rebels all the royalists who would have accepted the "infant king" as
their monarch, even though the following Revolution prevented this.

It was on the third of August that the commissioners, deputies of the
Provisionary Government, were brought before the king at Rambouillet.
They announced that twenty-five thousand armed Parisians were marching
on the chateau to compel him to quit his kingdom. It was not a matter
for debate, and at nine o'clock on the same night the monarch gave
assent to being conducted to Cherbourg, where he embarked upon his fatal
exile.

After 1830, with a business-like instinct, the authorities rented the
property for twelve years to the Baron Schickler, and, at the end of the
Revolution of 1848, its career became more plebeian still; it was rented
to a man who converted the palace into an elaborately appointed
road-house, and the lawns and groves into open-air restaurants and
dancing places.

Under the Gouvernement du Juillet the chateau, the park and the forest
were removed from the Civil List, and entered upon the inventory of the
Administration des Domaines.

Under the Second Empire Rambouillet appeared again on the monarchial
Civil List. Napoleon III came here at times to hunt, but not to live,
and of his rare appearances at the chateau but little record exists.
Since 1870 Rambouillet has belonged to the Republican Government, and,
since royalties no longer exist in France, Republican chiefs of state
now take the lead in Rambouillet's national hunts.

The property, as it stands to-day, is divided readily into four distinct
parts, the palace, the _parterre_, the _Jardin Anglais_ and the park.
The grove of lindens is remarkable in every respect, the ornamental
waters are gracious and of vast extent, and the _Laiterie_ and the
_Ferme_ are decidedly models of their kind; but the Chaumiere des
Coquillages, a rustic summer-house of rocks and shells and questionable
debris of all sorts, is hideous and unworthy.

Not the least of the charming features of the park is the great alley of
Louisiana cypresses, one of the real sights, indeed, perfecting the
charm of the great body of water to the left of the chateau.

Of the structure which existed in the fourteenth century, the chateau of
Rambouillet