It was only as late as 1760, however, that a public service of these diligences was established. At that time the coaches left Paris on stated days and travelled with unwonted regularity. The diligence to Rennes, in the heart of Bretagne, was timed for four days’ travelling, and five days was employed for the journey to the old Breton capital of Nantes, on the Loire.
These great carriages, commonly known as “Royales,” were hung on springs and drawn by eight horses. They did not travel as quickly as the malle-poste, but their rates were somewhat less, and they performed the common service before the advent of steam and the rail.
There was nothing very luxurious or grand about them, but they were majestic and picturesque, and they sometimes carried a load, including passengers and luggage, of five thousand kilos.
Closely allied with roads is the general topography of a country as shown by its maps.
No country has such a marvellous series of maps of its soil as has France. The maps of the Minister of the Interior and the Etat Major are wonders of the art, and no traveller in Normandy or Brittany, or indeed any other part of France, should be without them. They are obtainable at any bookseller’s in a large town, and the prices are remarkably low; ranging from thirty centimes a sheet for the map of the Etat Major, printed only in black, to eighty centimes a sheet for the map of the Minister of the Interior, printed in colours.
The following conventional signs will show the extreme practicability of the maps of the Etat Major, which are made on four different scales, the most useful being that of 1–80,000. The maps of the Minister of the Interior are made only on the scale of 1–100,000.
Now and then on these great highroads of France, of which those of Normandy and Brittany are representative, one passes a headquarters or a barracks of the gendarmerie, those servitors of the law, the national police, an organization which grew up out of the men-at-arms or gens d’armes of Charles VII.
These great barracks are veritable monasteries, where the religion of faithful duty to the public and the nation reigns supreme. One never passes one of these impressive establishments without a full appreciation of the motto of the knightly Bayard, so frequently graven over their doors: “Sans peur et sans reproche.”
The Assembly, in 1790, first instituted this almost perfectly organized police force, and Napoleon himself thought so highly of them that he wrote to Berthier in 1812: “Take not the police with you, but conserve them for the guarding of the country-side. Two or three hundred soldiers are as nothing, but two or three hundred police will assure the tranquillity and good order of the people at large.”
To-day, in times of peace, twenty-seven legions of police assure the security of the country-side; an effective force of about twenty-five thousand men and 725 officers, of whom a comparative few only are mounted.
A colonel or a lieutenant-colonel is placed at the head of a legion, a company being allotted to each department. The company is commanded by a major; then comes the district, placed under the orders of a captain or a lieutenant; the section, commanded by a junior officer; and finally a squad with a non-commissioned officer or corporal at its head.
Independent of crime and its details, the police are responsible as well for the maintenance of order in general.
The pay for all this, it is to be regretfully noted, is not at all commensurate. An unmounted policeman receives but 2 fr. 81 c. per day, and if he is mounted but 3 fr. 23 c. per day.
CHAPTER III.
THE FORESTS OF FRANCE
THE forests of France are a source of never-ending interest and pride to the Frenchman, of whatever station in life.
They are admirably preserved and cared for, and a paternal ministerial department guards them as jealously as a fond mother guards her children.
No cutting of trees is allowed, except according to a prescribed plan; and, when a new road is cut through—and those superlative roadways of France run straight as the crow flies through many of the finest forest tracts—as likely as not an old one is replanted.
The process of replanting goes on from day to day, and one sees no depleted forests of a former time, which are to-day a graveyard of bare stumps.
If there is any regulation as to tree-planting in these great forests, it would seem, to a casual observer, to be that where one tree has grown before two are to be made grow in its place.
There is a popular regard among all travellers in France for Fontainebleau, Versailles, and perhaps Chantilly, but there are other tree-grown areas, quite as charming, little known to the general traveller: Rambouillet, for instance, and Villers-Cotterets, of which Dumas writes so graphically in “The Wolf Leader.”
Normandy has more than its share of these splendid forests, some of them of great extent and charm. Indeed, the forest domain of Lyons, in Upper Normandy, one of the most extensive in all France, is literally covered with great beeches and oaks, surrounding small towns and hamlets, and an occasional ruined château or abbey, which makes a sojourn within its confines most enjoyable to all lovers of outdoor life.
Surrounding the old Norman capital of Rouen are five great tracts which serve the inhabitants of that now great commercial city as a summer playground greatly appreciated.
Game of various sorts still exists; deer in plenty, apparently, together with smaller kinds; and now and then one will hear tales of bears, which are, however, almost unbelievable.
In some regions—the forests of Louviers, for instance—the wild boar still exists. The chase for the wild boar, with the huntsmen following somewhat after the old custom (with a horn-blower, who is most theatrical in his get-up, and his followers, armed with lances and pikes in quite old-time fashion), is, as may be imagined, a most novel sight.
The forests of Roumare and Mauny, occupying the two peninsulas formed by the winding Seine just below Rouen, are remarkable, and are like nothing else except the other forests in France.
There are fine roadways crossing and recrossing in all directions, beautifully graded, with overhanging oaks and beeches, and as well kept as a city boulevard.
Deer are still abundant, and the whole impression which one receives is that of a genuine wildwood, and not an artificial preserve.
In the picturesque forest of Roumare is hidden away the tiny village of Genetey, which has for an attraction, besides its own delightful situation, an ancient Maison de Templiers of the thirteenth century, a well of great depth, and a chapel to St. Gargon, of the sixteenth century, built in wood, with some fine sculptures and paintings, which was at one time a favourite place for pious pilgrims from Rouen.
Not far away is Henouville, with a sixteenth-century church, lighted by five great windows of extraordinary proportions. The choir encloses the remains of Legendre, the almoner of Louis XIII., who was curé of Henouville, and whose fame as a horticulturist was as great as that brought him by his official position.
The near-by Château du Belley and its domain is now turned into a farm.
La Fontaine, a hamlet situated directly on the Seine bank, is overshadowed by a series of high rocks of most fantastic form, known as the chair, or pulpit, of Gargantua.
The forest of La Londe, of 2,154 hectares, on the opposite bank of the Seine from Rouen, is a remarkable tract of woodland, its oaks and beeches quite reminiscent of Fontainebleau. The trees as a whole are the most ancient and grand of those of