MIRACULOUS CONVERSION OF A BEAR. 
197 
pheasant. This forest forms part of a thick mass of forests which 
covers the left bank of the Oise, in an extent of more than sixty- 
five thousand acres, and in the centre of which beams, like a dia- 
mond encased in emerald, the royal villa of Compeigne. It is 
the only canton of France which still translates the Commentaries 
of Caesar and gives an idea of the Gaul of the Druids. 
It is only there and at Fontainbleau that we meet still with sec- 
ular forests dying their beautiful death, giant trees whose heads 
age ■ has bared, and whose long gaunt arms, favorite perches of 
the doves, rise above the surrounding foliage like the high top- 
masts of a vessel swallowed up in an ocean of verdure. Among 
those crowned heads whose birth remounts to the advent of the 
first Capet, there were some which could boast of having assisted 
in their infancy in the hunts of the bison, the bear, and the aurochs ; 
the only three things of the middle age that we can reasonably 
regret. 
And the legend on this point, in accordance with analogy, re- 
lates, that the bear which peopled the solitudes of Gaul before 
the invasion of Christianity, did not see with pleasure the es- 
tablishment of man in his neighborhood, and that he worked with 
all his power to hinder him. So that one fine morning, on the 
banks of the Oise, one of these mischievous beasts had the inhuman- 
ity to unharness a yoke of oxen which had been prepared to trace 
the first furrow in the virgin soil of a denuded forest. The mur- 
derer carried the slaughtered ox to his cave. 
But a bear and an ox do not go off in that fashion, one carrying 
the other, without leaving some traces of their passage through the 
brushwood, besides, the robber who reckoned on impunity, made no 
attempt to conceal his tracks, an imprudence which ruined him. 
He found indeed that chance had led that very day to this place a 
pious personage, beloved of God, who called himself Saint Medard, 
Bishop of Soissons, the same who makes it rain so much. 
The news of the attack reached him before the body of the 
victim was entirely consumed. The worthy bishop eagerly seized 
this admirable occasion to perform one of those miracles v/liich 
are so efficacious in making proselytes during the infancy of re- 
ligions. He repairs to the scene of the accident, follows the beast 
