ITS PECULIAR FASCINATION. 
41 
seem to me, in spite of tlieir stately bearing and 
smooth shining bark, a thing I have seen elsewhere. 
The place is original only where it is low, gloomy 
rock; where it bears evidence of the struggle of the 
sandstone, the twisted tree, the perseverance of the 
elm, or the courageous effort of the oak. 
Many persons have remained here fascinated and 
enthralled. Coming only for a month, they have 
lingered until death. To the enchanting scene they 
have addressed the lover’s speech to his beloved:— 
“ Let me live, let me die with thee ! ”—Tecum vivere 
amem, tecum obeam libens. 
It is a curious fact that every individual finds 
here what he most delights in: Saint Louis, the 
Thebaid of which he dreamed; while Henry IV., who 
cared for nothing but pleasure, exclaimed, “ My de¬ 
licious deserts ! ” The poor mystical exile, Kosciusko,* 
felt the attraction of his Lithuanian forests, and here 
took root. A man of stone, of flint,—the Breton 
Maud’huys,—saw here the image of his native Brittany, 
and built up, stone upon stone, the most original book 
written upon Fontainebleau. 
It is a region of power, which you cannot enter with 
impunity. Some persons lose in it their wits, undergo 
a strange metamorphosis, and like Bottom, in Windsor 
Forest, see themselves adorned with ass’s ears. For 
the forest is a person: has its lovers and its detrac- 
c iS 
* The Polish hero who unavailingly struggled to secure his country’s freedom, but was 
crushed by the power of Russia:— 
“ And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell! ” 
