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A DAY AT FONTAINBLEAU.--THE ROYAL HUNT.


Having learned that the King and the Dauphin, with the _Duc de Grammont_,
and the rest of the royal suite, were about to proceed to Fontainbleau,
in order to enjoy the diversion of hunting, I resolved to be there to
meet them, to see with my own eyes a royal personage of whom I had heard
so much. Accordingly I ordered post horses, and arrived in the town about
six hours after his Most Christian Majesty.

After breakfasting on a cold partridge and some excellent coffee, I set
out at eight o'clock for the forest. Even at that hour--a late one in
France, when compared with England--the roads were by no means thronged,
and I could very plainly perceive that the major part of the equestrians
were attached to the court, and that the pedestrians were either such as
had been in the enjoyment of some of the good things of this life under
the present family, or such as were in expectancy of them. There was a
third class, altogether composed of the mob, who, partly incited by the
desire of plunder, the love of idleness, or an indistinct hope of
obtaining the entrails of the deer, flocked in great numbers to witness
the feats of the royal party. Among this latter class, old men, old women,
and very young boys predominated.

The forest of Fontainbleau is in itself beautiful in the extreme. The
various alleys formed by the manner in which the oak trees are planted,
create an imposing and majestic _coup d'oeil_, which is only bounded
almost by the horizon. At the bottom and in the middle of these alleys