FIRELIGHT PICTURES 



royal park now Propriete Nationale, and duly stamped, 

 wherever room can be found for it f with the priggish and 

 lying motto : Liberte, Egalite, Fratemite was dull and drab 

 and neglected : silent and morose. The Grand Monarques 

 extravagances in stone seemed positively shamefaced. The 

 whole place this artificial park within the ancient woods- 

 had the melancholy of things outworn and disowned. 



Yet here, in my armchair by the firelight, up on the side 

 of our dear Surrey hill, I can still picture 

 sharply to myself the summer life of St. Cloud 

 as it was in the careless precarious days 

 of the Second Empire. 

 The Empress Eugenie, then a young wife, 

 and one of the most beautiful women of 

 Europe, lived at the Chateau. And the 

 Park, though thrown open to the people, was 

 kept trim with jealous care. 

 Roads generously sanded, [.. 

 lawns watered and mown -. N ( \ 

 with systematic care, par- "V/j 

 terres ever bright with 

 flowers, all was marvel- " 

 lously different then from 

 the present day shabbiness. 

 I seem to see again, even with 

 almost a lifetime's experience in- 

 tervening, the vivid scene impressed on 

 the observant and eager eyes of the child. 

 The gay-hued crowds of ladies in all the then elegance of 

 scuttle bonnets and crinolines / the bevies of children, of every 



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