At the great hunting exposition recently held at Vienna the _clou_ of the display was a French royal hunting-lodge in the style of Louis XVI, hung with veritable Gobelin tapestries, loaned by the French government and picturing "The Hunt in France." It was called by the critics a unique painting in a beautiful frame. In the days of Francis I and his sons, the royal hunt was given a great impetus by Catherine de Medici, wife of Henri II. Francis, in company with his sons, had gone to Marseilles to meet the Medici bride, who was on her way to make her home at the Paris Louvre, and when he found her possessed of so lively manners and such great intelligence he became so charmed with her that, it is said, he danced with her all of the first evening. What pleased the monarch even more, and perhaps not less his sons, was that she shot with an arquebuse like a sharpshooter, and could ride to hounds like a natural-born Amazon. She was more than a rival, as it afterwards proved, of that arch-huntress, Diane de Poitiers. History recounts in detail that last royal hunt of Francis I at Rambouillet, when he was lying near to death, the guest of his old friend, d'Angennes. The old manor, half hunting-lodge, half fortress, and very nearly royal in all its appointments, proved a comfortable enough rest-house, and on the day after his arrival, in March, 1547, the monarch commanded the preparations for a royal hunt to commence at daybreak in the neighbouring forest. The equipage started forth in full ceremonial on the quest of stag and boar. The bugles blew and a sort of stimulated courage once more entered the king's breast, courage born of the excitement around him, the baying of the hounds and the tramping and neighing of impatient horses. He had forced himself from his bed and on horseback and started off with the rest, defying the better counsel of his retainers. His strength proved to be born of a fictitious enthusiasm, and, speedily losing interest, he was brought back to the manor where he had his apartments, and put speechless and half dead to bed, actually dying the next day from this last over-exertion, scarce half a century of the span of his life accomplished. Henri de Navarre also was a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in _Jarnet_ house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurancon than the finest _cru_ in Paris cellars. He hated the parade of courts, was dirty, unkempt and careless, a genuine son of the soil, heedless of fate, and an excellent huntsman. Up to the seventeenth century the ladies of the French court showed a keener interest for falconry than for the hunt by horse and hounds.