FORESTS are supposed to constitute the exclusive domain of romance writers; even as lakes have been appropriated by poets and balladmongers. The Schwarzwald and the Odenwald extend their gloomy shades through many a horrification in three volumes, or even five. Sherwood and Needwood, with the connivance of the Minerva Press, have bid us "Stand and deliver" till we trembled at the very sight of a furze bush; while twenty romancers have made us as sick of "The New Forest," as a season at South.. ampton. Since Sir Walter's "Ivanhoe" presented the world with a view of forest scenery, more picturesque than the sketches of Gilpin, or the realities of Hobhima, we have been favoured with such a tedious infinity of copies, that we verily believe we could travel from Dan to Beersheba, (i. e. from Sand-Pit Gate to Fern Hill,) in the lordly shades of Windsor, and find "all barren!"

Nevertheless, there does exist a Forest for which we must admit an especial predilection ;within the limits of civilization-no intrenchment on the property of Fenimore Cooper-no section of the ground of Himalaya Fraser,-nay! within a morning's drive of a capital city; yet possessing features as wild and characteristic as Rosa might have delighted to paint, or Ariosto to depict, as the rendezvous of some halfchivalrous, half-magic encounter. The Forest of Fontainebleau,—still savage in its scenery as when the Crusader-King, St. Louis, was wont to term it "Ses déserts chéris,"-still lonely as when Napoleon, who loved it with a similar predilection, used to prick forward in advance of his officious court, to enjoy his reveries in its haute futaie,—is now depopulated even of the superfluity of game, which, during the ascendency of the elder Bourbon princes, and the hunting days of the booby-hero of the Trocadero, was supposed to threaten it with extinction. Were all the royal forests of France equally devastated, the office of Grand Verderer would become a sinecure; for, unless when that equivocal compeer of the Montmorencys and St. Simons, the Duc de Stackpoole, contrives to unite with his own pack of stag-hounds the meutes of two or three neighbouring nobles, to get up a Chevy Chase, grievously resembling the Epping Hunt, the ancient oaks of Fontainebleau forget the very echo of a Reveillée ! tumult of hounds and horns, however, is of rare occurrence; and during the summer season, not a soul is stirring in the forest, unless some botanical student from the Pays Latin, with his wallet on his shoulder and his herbal in his hand; or some disciple of Camille Roqueplan or Isabey, standing rapt and inspired among the rocks of Franchard, or the precipices of La Salle, to dash into his book of studies the light outline of some weeping birch, or hint the solemn grandeur of

VOL. I.NO. X.

The

that kingly stem,-unique even among oaks,le bouquet du Roi.

Yet even these metropolitan loungers, and the cockney hunting-train of a Birmingham Duke, are incapable of deteriorating the venerable grace of Fontainebleau. Its masses of granite, resembling colossal heads of Druids, peeping forth from the shade, speak of times long anterior to the voluptuous triumphs of Diana of Poitiers, whence date the meretricious splendours of the palace; and the Galerie des Cerfs, which witnessed the wanton murder of Christina of Sweden's Monaldeschi, or the Galerie de Henri IV., where Sully pleaded in vain a remission of Biron's sentence of execution, are things but of yesterday, compared with the Gorges d'Apremont, or the crags of the Mont-Aigu.

The Palace of Fontainebleau, indeed, in spite of every emendation perpetrated by every prince succeeding the brother-in-law of our own bluff Harry, retains a most antique and quaint appearance; yet antiquated as it is, its peaked roofs and overhanging bartizans are a world too modern for the mossy frame of sylvan verdure with which the picture is encircled. Pious anchorites have sanctified themselves in the recesses of the Forest, as the hermitages of the Weeping Rock, and of La Madelaine, remain to attest; and hermits might fast and pray there still without much molestation from the children of this world. Charles X., had he been inclined to emulate the example of the Corsican, and execute his abdication in the palace of the Fountain of Fine Water, or Fontaine Belle Eau, might have retired thereafter to one of its sylvan lodges, and ended his days as holily as Charles V., in his peevish cell of St. Just. The Royal Forest might have formed an appropriate retreat for the repentance of a sovereign:-lordly, lofty, gloomy, worthy to overshadow the spirit of the blood-stained Roi de la Mitraille!

It was during the brilliant ascendency of Napoleon, however, that Fontainebleau attained its highest pitch of dignity,-at the period when a Vicar of God was brought captive to its gates, and kings and princes yielded tribute to the footstool of its warrior-sovereign,—or as Béranger describes it,—

"L'époque où fécondant l'histoire,
Sa grande épée, effroi des nations,
Resplendissante au soleil de la gloire,

En fit sur la France rejaillir les rayons!" It was to afford a fitting asylum to Pius VII., when he visited France to place the Imperial Crown upon the brows of the hero of Marengo, that the palace of Fontainebleau was raised from the degradation into which it had fallen at the period of the First Revolution; and its reparations were completed, in order to adorn, with becoming splendour, the prison of the same spiritual Prince, when, eight years afterwards, he was

2 Y

installed there in durance, with the view of intimidating the vicegerent of Christendom into the cession of his temporal sovereignity. There, too, Charles V. abode in temporal seclusion, after abdicating the government of Spain and the Indies to the Imperial Conqueror. Fontainebleau appeared to have been transformed into a sort of regal Salpetrière, for the reformation of offending potentates!

But if an especial suite of apartments became consecrated to this important purpose, the main body of the building (which has been compared by English travellers to a rendezvous of palaces, rather than a single and separate edifice) was still occupied as the Imperial residence of the most brilliant court of modern Europe. Thither, every autumn, the Emperor repaired, as to a favourite hunting seat; and the days seemed come again when Louis XIV., gliding with histrionic dignity through the stately saloons of Versailles, the palace of his own creation, made it his pride to be accosted by his courtiers with intercessions for the honour of "following the Court in its ensuing journey to Fontainebleau ;" an event which, at one time, constituted one of its chief enlivenments. Brilliant, however, as was that scene of the eighteenth century,-when Moliere commemorated the sojourn of his Royal patron by the production of the "Tartuffe," and Racine, by bringing forward some tragic chef d'œuvre,— the Cours des Fontaines exhibited a still gayer pageant, when crowded by the unparallelled cortège of courtiers, which enabled the Emperor of France to create an antechamber for the kings that waited at his levee ! The two Henrys of France and the first Francis may have added to the regal edifice the splendid galleries still bearing their names; but it remained for the son of a Corsican notary to form the Antechambre des Rois! Beautiful women-and the most beautiful among them were the nearest kindred of Napoleon,-men of renown-and the most famous were those who had confronted danger nearest to his person,-thronged the antique saloons of Fontainebleau; the golden bees embroidered upon whose canopies of velvet seemed distinctive of a new era in the history of the government of the country. The whole scene presented a gorgeous masque of mimic majesty,

chivalrous as the Court of Francis I., magnificent as that of Louis le Grand, and a thousandfold more animated than either.

It was, perhaps, that the personages of the drama, less perfect in their parts, were more attentive to the getting up of the piece-it was, perhaps, that their physical and moral impulses, unsubdued by the influence of the indolence divine of Royal nature, betrayed a stronger and more vivid temperament; but certain it is, that never were fêtes so brilliant-never courts so stirring, as those presided over by Josephine, and graced by the charms of the Reine Hortense, and the Princesses Pauline, Elisa, and Caroline, the sisters of Napoleon. The Bourbons might, and may, exhibit their household splendours as ceremoniously as they will; but those levees of up

start kings-those quadrilles of plebeian queens -those carrousels of parvenu knights, whose spurs were in reality the meed of valour,-exceeded all preceding pomps, as well as any that may have subsequently supplied their place. They rode, they danced, they dressed, they curtsied, they congeed, as if they could not too strenuously exercise the privileges of the greatness so singularly thrust upon them; and, spurred on by reminiscences of the sordid penury with which their youth had been environed-or, perhaps, by a prescience of the utter ruin ultimately to be called down on their heads by the ambition of the insatiable invader of thrones and dominions, sported on painted pinions in the sunshine of Napoleon's glory, so long as it was permitted to irradiate their remarkable destiny.

Nor were their capacities of enjoyment ever more liberally taxed than at Fontainebleau. There, the Emperor, luxuriating in momentary relaxation from the toils of sovereignty, and giving access only to those ministers with whom it was indispensable to be in immediate communication, indulged less eagerly in the recreation of the chase, than in the pleasures of unrestrained intercourse with such persons as really shared his confidence and affection: and the calumniated Napoleon was a man of warm and strong affections. Those who approached nearest his person, and who have not yet betrayed him by manufacturing a book at his expense, admit that he was the honestest man and le plus bon homme of all the Imperial Court; or, to borrow the expression of his brother Jerome, "mieux que tout ce qui l'entourait." Though notoriously the victim of Josephine's coquetry during their early days of marriage, how fervent and honourable is the affection poured forth by the husband, in the correspondence between them published by her daughter Hortense !-what truth-what simplicity, in every expression!--what nobleness of purpose in every counsel imparted! While the finical and minaudière ex-Marchioness addressed herself to the task of conciliating the French nation by the graces of her smile and the richness of her laces and cachemires, he was bidding her be " generous but economical:"-economical of her money, which was the people's-of her tenderness, which ought to have been his; and of her time, which she was too apt to bestow upon every obsequious courtier and gossiping dowager. How patient too, did he show himself under the thwartings occasioned by the intriguing spirit of his brothers-how blinded by his affection for his sisters!—and when enlightened by the officious jealousy of Josephine, how susceptible to their shame-how gentle in their condemnation ! Above all, how doatingly-how thoroughly-a father!

Meanwhile, amid all his policy,—all his tact,all his dexterous appeals to the national vanity of the French, in the pomp and splendour of his Court, it was, in truth, with a view of gratifying the predilections of the Empress and her female train, the Mesdames Junot, Maret, Marmont, Duchâtelet, Regnault, St. Jean d'Angley, Vis

conti, and others,-that the halls of Fontainebleau were occasionally illuminated for the display of masks and festivals; and its forestcauseways levelled and made smooth, to admit their participation in the pleasures of the chase.

At the close of one of these festivals,-a ball given preparatory to the departure of the Emperor for a new campaign, a fête, (no offence to the Montmerencys, the Noailles, or the Grammonts,) as graceful and brilliant as the more legitimate Courts of Fontainebleau ever witnessed, the gay circle was dissolved, the lights extinguished, and the ushers and chamberlains, having paraded the state-apartments to ascertain that all was safe, had retired in their turn to rest. Nothing remained in evidence of watchfulness but the Captain of the Guards yawning at his post, the numerous sentries en fuction in the various quadrangles of the palace, with here and there a light streaming from the windows of some vestibule or staircase, such as in the abode of even the most frugal and self-secure of sovereigns,—of a citizen-king, for instance,-gives evidence that there must be no night within the purlieus of a palace-that perpetual vigil is indispensable to secure the safety of an anointed head!

All was quiet, save the tinkling of the Fountain of Ulysses in the great court, and the harsh croaking of the frogs in the adjoining lake; when, on a sudden, a slight tumult became perceptible in the Cour de la Fontaine; and a few stragglers, in complete dishabille, were seen hurriedly traversing the corridors leading to the Aile des Princes. Sentries were challenged, and gates unclosed! The stir and bustle increased. Corvisart, the Emperor's favourite physician, had been hastily summoned from his bed ;—what, what could be the matter? Was Josephine, whom often already a remote hint of the premeditated repudiation had thrown into hysterics, again attacked with migraine? Had Madame Mère fasted too long over her beads? Or was the Princes Borghese suffering from some of her imaginary heartaches, or head-aches? Vain toil to guess! Some hundred or so of young and fanciful beauties just then lodged under the peaked roofs of Fontainebleau, were enough to afford practice and perplexity to Galen and all his sons!

But it was not for the sake of anything in the shape of woman,-no! not even of Madame de Waleska herself,-that Constant would have presumed to steal down the little circular staircase leading from the Emperor's apartment to the Cabinet Topographiques; where, on the eve of his departure for the grand army, he was engaged in investigating a map, pricked out subsequently to the Military Council of the morning, by the hands of Baron Fain, and Baron Bacler d'Albe.

Leaning over a table overhung by a shaded lamp, and covered with maps and plans, Napoleon's attention was engrossed in dictating notes to his aide-de-camp, when a slight knock at the door announced some privileged person; and, with

a face foretelling the nature of a tragic volume, the premier valet de chambre made his appear

ance.

"What is the matter, Constant ?" cried the Emperor, hastily, apprehending he knew not what from this unprecedented interruption.

""

"Sire, with your Majesty's gracious permission, I have ventured to intrude, in order"Bah! Speak out,-to the point!-What has happened?”

"Cardinal Caprara, Sire, is expiring!""Apres?" inquired Napoleon, calmly insinuating his forefinger into his waistcoat pocket, and regaling himself with a pinch of snuff, as irreverently as if the "apres" of the act of dissolution of a member of the Sacred College could possibly fall within the precognition of a valet-de-chambre !

"Sire! your Majesty's goodness will, I trust, pardon my officiousness; but I consider it my duty to acquaint your Majesty, previous to the fatal catastrophe, that

"Bah!" again interrupted the Emperor,never so completely "le petit caporal," as with a military map before him, and a perspective of triumph opening from its indications.

-"That his Eminence has fallen a victim to poison," continued Constant, satisfied that it was his business to persevere in his relation. "To poison?" ejaculated Napoleon, turning round short on the valet-de-chambre. "To poison?" reiterated Fain. in the Royal Palace of Fontainebleau !-a Prince of the Holy Roman Church-the Nuncio of the Pope-poisoned !—Quelle horreur !"

"Poisoned

"This becomes serious," said the Emperor, coolly. "Who is with him?-Who has been sent for?"

"The Bishop of Meaux, Sire, is with his Eminence."

"A Bishop!-why not a physician ?-Where is Corvisart,-where is Ivan ?”.

"And the Almoner of Her Imperial Majesty," continued Constant, is about to administer""Extreme Unction, no doubt! when an emetic might prove the Cardinal's salvation!"

"Meanwhile, if your Majesty will permit me to observe," said the aide-de-camp, abruptly, "this unfortunate event may lead to most calamitous conclusions, Cardinal Caprara possesses the personal regard and confidence of His Holiness; and his mission in France, bearing reference to so delicate and personal a question, inferences might possibly arise."

" I

"You are right!" cried the Emperor. should be on the spot! and the more so that the Cardinal appears to be surrounded by a tribe of fools, more idiotic, if possible, and old-womanish than himself. Constant,-my hat. Be in waiting in the library till my return."

And having hurriedly traversed the corridor leading from the Royal library to a small door opening under the grand staircase of the Fer à Cheval, the Emperor hastened across the courts of the two intervening quadrangles with such rapidity, that the sentry at the first post had

scarcely carried his hand to his musket to present arms, when his Majesty reached the second. All was in confusion round the entrance, and on the staircase leading to the Cardinal's apart. ments. The doors of the antechamber stood wide open, and two garçons de bain were squabbling in the saloon; every person in authority having pushed forward to the bedside of the dying Churchman.

"Did Caprara sup with me to-night?" inquired the Emperor, as he crossed the vestibule, to Fain, who was closely following.

"I ask you what was served to His Eminence at supper?" persisted the Emperor. "Answer quickly and briefly, for his sake and your own!"— "Mushrooms, Sire!" interposed Fain, who had already obtained from the Cardinal's maitre d'hotel, the desired intelligence. "Des Oron

ges sautés a l'huile, a l'Italienne, by his own cook."

"Coglioni!" ejaculated Bonaparte, all the Corsican kindling in him at the word. "Not

a genuine Orange is to be found on this side the Alps! They have poisoned him with some nox

"True, true!—He was served, then, in his own apartments?" continued Napoleon, addressing a domestic in the livery of the Household, who was about to scud away on recognising the Emperor. "Where did his Eminence sup tonight?-who was present ?-who furnished the repast?"

"His Eminence supped in his own chamber, Sire, attended by his own almoner, on dishes especially prepared by his own domestics," interposed the aide-de-camp, who had overheard the question, and was aware of Napoleon's fondness for succinct intelligence.

"So much the better!" muttered the Emperor, taking breath. “It is probable, then, that there may be no poison in the case. He may be dying of a surfeit."

But when, in another minute, Napoleon penetrated into the bed-chamber, there was no mistaking the symptoms of the Nuncio for those of an indigestion !-Churchman or Laymangourmand or anchoret-short-necked or longit was no ordinary seizure which had rendered. his face so livid, his lips so black, his nostrils so distended, nay, his eyes so fixed and sightless, that even the entrance of the Emperor produced no change of countenance in the moribund!

"Alas! alas ! dying without the consolation of the Church!" sighed the Bishop of Meaux, as he let fall upon the coverlid the hand he had been holding in his own, in the hope of discerning some token of amendment.

Let Paulet be instantly sent for. It may not yet be too late to try a counter-poison."

And satisfied that a supper of stewed mushrooms would afford a very natural cause to misgiving Europe for the sudden demise even of a Cardinal, the Emperor returned to his surveys as speedily as he had quitted them.

"So, then, Monsieur le Drole!" cried he, seizing Constant by the ear as he traversed the Bibliothéque, where the valet-de-chambre was in waiting, to enter the topographical study,—“You think proper, it seems, to break in upon my privacy, because a pampered priest chooses to overeat himself?"

And Constant, discovering in an instant from the familiar mode of his Imperial Majesty's address, that he considered Caprara in no real danger, and was no little pleased to find the case less urgent than he had been led to expect, ventured to reply, that "another time, under such circumstances, he would shew more discretion."

"Another time, under such circumstances, (if ever another cook should be found in the Palace, of sufficient ignorance to serve up toadstools as an entremet,) do as I have done now-send for Doctor Paulet, who has passed his life à s'enchampignoniser, in studying the nature and properties of mushrooms, and do not interrupt me, till the ipecacuanha has done its worst."

"See Doctor Paulet to-night, before he quits the Cardinal, that you may be prepared with particulars when you wake me in the morning,' was Napoleon's final adjuration, when, having officiated at his master's toilet, Constant was about to retire for the night, to receive the same services from his own valet-de-chambre, leaving the door of the Imperial Chamber to the guardianship of the faithful Rostan.

Unhappily, further intelligence on the subject awaited the reveil of the Emperor! Two words from Constant would have sufficed to acquaint the world that Paulet had administered an antidote, and that the Cardinal was out of danger; but while a Page of the Household was offering formal condolences and formal compliments to the Prince of the Church, on the part of their Imperial Majesties, the Duc d' Otrante had arrived from Paris, and was about to be admitted to an audience of the Emperor! -the Duc d'Otrante,-the Joseph Fouché,-the Minister of Police,-whose name has been damned to everlasting fame, in France, as the able originator of a system of espionage, unique

in the odium of its efficiency; and who was at that period forestalling the desires and projects of Napoleon, by preparing the way for his divorce, and the formation of a more auspicious matrimonial alliance.

"This is a sad affair, Sire, of the Cardinal Caprara," observed the Chef de Police, having completed the transactions which had motived his journey from the capital.

"Sad?" reiterated the Emperor. "I understood from Constant that Paulet answered for his life ?"

"I met Doctor Paulet, Sire, as I entered the Cour d'Honneur."

"Well?"

“He assured me that there were no grounds for alarm,—that in a day or two his Eminence would be as well as ever

"And capable of supping a second time on a ragout of fausses Oronges!—Jackass !"

"But is it proved, Sire, that the mushrooms were pernicious?"

"Proved! You should have seen the Cardinal's face!-purple as his stockings! Many an unfortunate gamin has been deposited in the dead-room of the Morgue, with twice as much life in his frame! Pernicious!-Nothing but Paulet's skill could have saved him!"

"Your Majesty mistakes me. Poisoned, I admit him to have been; but my people here assured me they have procured evidence that the mushrooms picked and selected yesterday, at the Cardinal's own suggestion, during a promenade to the Rocher de Montigny, were of the true and genuine Orange species. It seems that his Eminence's piqueur, aware of the ridicule incurred during their stay at Paris, by Caprara's proverbial parsimony, not choosing to be seen entering the palace gates, charged with a pannier of mushrooms, like the baudet of a market-gardener, intrusted them accordingly to the hand of a wood-cutter working near the spot, who engaged to convey them to the Cardinal's kitchen. By this individual, they were assuredly changed on the road."

"Bah!" cried the Emperor.

"Would you and your mouchards have me believe Caprara is a sufficiently great man, to have enemies among the wood-cutters of Fontainebleau?-Poison a Cardinal? They could do no more for me!Besides, the people of these cantons still smack of Bourbon patronage, and are as pious as the prudes of the Faubourg St. Germain. I would warrant every knave of them to kiss the hem of the petticoat-tail of the smallest member of the sacred conclave. Poison a Cardinal! They would as soon think of denying St. Peter!"

"Nevertheless," pursued Fouché," my agents assert that Cardinal Caprara is detested by the people, as the supposed bearer of his Holiness's promise of assent to the project of your Majesty's divorce;" (involuntarily Napoleon turned his eyes towards the door affording access to his apartments, from those of the susceptible Josephine ;) nor need I remind you, Sire, that the extreme popularity of the Empress",

"I know, I know!" interrupted Napoleon, who was indeed aware that the rumour of his repudiation of Josephine, had created a most unfavourable impression throughout the kingdom. "But do you pretend to insinuate that the French nation has entered into a conspiracy to poison Caprara, for having been the mere state-courier of Pius VII!—Que diable !—Josephine's party must, in that case, be stronger and more redoubtable than I have ever had cause to think it!"

"The young man pointed out to suspicion as the bearer of the mushrooms from Montigny to the Palace," resumed the Duc d'Otrante, repressing the sneer of his Imperial master, by proceeding at once to fucts, is one to whom the attention of my people at Fontainebleau has been previously directed, as dangerous and involved in mysterious connexions.

"Under surveillance, then?" "Under surveillance."

"And yet employed in the public works? Why, under such circumstances, allow him to be retained by the Inspector of the Royal Forests?"

Fouché replied only by a smile, manifestly implying, "To keep him under the cognizance of the Police."

"True" replied the Emperor, replying to this tacit reply. "But it might be desirable that your people kept their hands as well as their eyes upon the fellow, instead of leaving him at liberty to spoil the supper and nightrest of a Prince of the Church. Cospetto! These mushrooms may yet chance to figure in a Papal Bull !”

The breakfast hour was now approaching, the one of all the four-and-twenty when Napoleon was most accessible to familiar intercourse; and Fouché seemed to profit by his increasing goodhumour, in order to push still further the subject under discussion.

"In the apprehension that an unfavourable view of the affair might reach the Court of Rome, said he, "I have already caused this young man, this Guillot, to be arrested. It is a token of respect due to the rank of Cardinal Caprara.”

66

Respect due to a broomstick!" muttered the Petit Caporal.

"Which motive might perhaps be held insuf ficient," pursued Fouché; " but that in spreading a net over a minnow, I hope to secure as fine a cock-salmon as ever wagged a fin within the meshes of the Police !"

"Aha!" cried Napoleon, who had been traversing the room, and now stopped short opposite the official operative, who might well be called (as Victor Hugo terms our English hangman) "the royal right arm !”

"Within the last six weeks," continued Fouché, "a mansion situated near the ferry of Valvin, which your Majesty once entertained thoughts of hiring, (but that the situation was scarcely secluded enough for the purpose,) as a residence for Madame de

"I know, I know!" hastily interrupted Bo