The life they led was an ideal one--a dream, an inspiring fantasy. The songs of birds, the brush of wings of butterflies, the thousand and one mysterious sounds of animated, sun-cheered Nature, and the scent of spring narcissi, with the glowing glories of anemones, seemed all to be in harmony with the fresh greenery of tree and crop, the gambols of young lambs, and the cooing of sweetheart doves. The King and Queen became for the nonce shepherd and shepherdess; Jehanne was nymph of the bosquets, René her impassioned Apollo, his heart’s wounds healed at last, his soul’s new hopes at bud. The Muse of Poetry dwelt also in that pleasant fairy-land, and her voice, rustling the zephyr-moved foliage, reached the poetic nature of the agrestical King, and out of his sympathetic brain came the impulse of the hand which penned one of the most delicate and affecting “Pastorals” that ever man produced. The scene is laid in the meadows of the royal country house, where shepherds and shepherdesses and toilers in the soil,--vigorous and fair,--are giving themselves away to the joys of pastoral revels. Chancing that way is a pilgrim, newly come from recording his vows at the shrine of Nôtre Dame de Larghet. Looking ahead, the penitent beholds the entrancing vision, and, whilst he brushes away the assiduous attentions of a big bumble-bee, he is conscious of voices murmuring close at hand. It is but the love-chat of a lovelorn lad and lass, seated by a dripping fountain of the rivulet. Behind them is the stump of a great forest king with no more than one lean branch to show its life. The youth vanishes mysteriously, but the girl beckons caressingly to the wandering pilgrim, and she invites him with dulcet voice: “Regnault, vien environ De la souche; et nous asseon, Cy toy et moy!” “Regnault, come thee near This tree; have no fear, Only thee and me!”