Here in strange juxtaposition with a remarkably interesting and picturesque church, and the dainty Renaissance Hôtel de Ville, with its _jacquemart_, its belfry, its pointed gable, and its ornate façade, is found a blend of past and present, which combines to produce one of those transformations or stage-settings which throughout France are so often met with and admired. No more charming _petite ville_ exists in all France than Compiègne, one of the most favoured of all the country residences of the Kings of France. The château seen to-day was an erection of Louis XV. Le Forêt de Compiègne is as beautiful and unspoiled as any, and is, moreover, not overrun with tourists and trippers, as is Fontainebleau. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF THE DUCS DE VALOIS, CRÉPY] Its area approximates 60,000 acres, and its circumference sixty miles. In short, the whole domain forms a charming and delightful place of retreat, which must have been duly appreciated during the troublous times of Louis' reign. It was here, in the Forêt de Compiègne, that the great hunting was held, which is treated in "Chicot the Jester." The Bois de Vincennes was a famous duelling-ground--and is to-day, _sub rosa_. It was here that Louis de Franchi, in the "Corsican Brothers," who forewarned of his fate, died in the duel with René de Chateaurien, just as he had predicted; at exactly "_neuf heures dix_." This park is by no means the rival of the Bois de Boulogne in the affections of the Parisian public, but it is a wide expanse of tree-covered park land, and possesses all the characteristics of the other suburban _forêts_ which surround Paris on all sides. It has, moreover, a château, a former retreat or country residence of the Kings of France, though to-day it has been made over to the ministry of war, whereas the Château de Madrid, the former possession of the Bois de Boulogne, has disappeared. The Château de Vincennes is not one of the sights of Paris. For a fact, it is quite inaccessible, being surrounded by the ramparts of the Fort de Vincennes, and therefore forbidden to the inquisitive. It was here in the Château de Vincennes that Charles IX. died a lingering death, "by the poison prepared for another," as Dumas has it in "Marguerite de Valois." Among the many illustrious prisoners of the Château de Vincennes have been the King of Navarre (1574), Condé (1650), Cardinal de Retz (1652), Fouquet (1661), Mirabeau (1777), the Duc d'Enghien (1804), and many others, most of whom have lived and breathed in Dumas' pages, in the same parts which they played in real life. CHAPTER XVII. THE FRENCH PROVINCES