1936 On the Continent

even superficially. Heinrich Heine, the German poet, boasted that he knew every tree “by name” in this forest.
Chantilly
    Chantilly, the French Newmarket, is about 25 miles from Paris, and is the French centre for training race-horses. The town also has a magnificent palace that is a veritable art museum and a famous railway station and forest. Also, itwas here that the French General Staff had its headquarters from 1914 till 1917.
    The Palace, which consists of the Great and Small Palaces, has been rebuilt several times since the thirteenth century. It comprises the magnificent “Condé Museum,” with pictures by Rembrandt, Poussin, Titian, Watteau, Raphael, Veronese, Van Dyck, Botticelli, etc.
Senlis
    Is a quarter of an hour’s journey from Chantilly, and was the most advanced position on the way to Paris that the Germans occupied for a few days in 1914, devastating and burning it.
    Senlis is famous for its eleventh-century palace, its thirteenth-century Notre Dame cathedral and its Gallo-Roman arenas.
Compiègne
    Compiègne is close to Senlis and also has a famous palace. But you must first of all visit, in the annexe of the Town Hall, the Virenel Museum, with its famous collection of 30,000 lead soldiers of all types.
    The palace, built by Louis XV, was occupied by the English in August 1914, by the Germans in September, and finally by the Allied General Staff from March 1917 until May 1918. It contains several hundred rooms, which you will probably not have the time to look over, but you will like its wood, which is almost as large as the Forest of Fontainebleau, and was the favourite rendezvous of the “great lovers” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If the trees of this wood could talk, they could tell us a great deal about the loves of Madame Pompadour, Josephine, Georges Sand, Alfred de Musset, Chopin and the young Victor Hugo.
    Before returning to Paris you must look in at Enghien-Les-Bains, about eight miles from the capital, on the shore of a charming lake. The place has thermal springs, and the casino nearest to Paris.
    Two miles farther on, at Montmorency, you will find many reminders of Rousseau. The Rousseau Museum and
L’Ermitage
contain a great deal of material that recalls the strange life of this great romantic of the eighteenth century.

PROVINCIAL FRANCE
    France is essentially a country of variety, more perhaps than any other country in Europe. You can find practically anything you want there, if you only know where to look, so wide is the range, of climates, scenery, products, and even races and languages.
    You can’t go anywhere in France without finding something to amuse, interest or startle you out of yourself.
    This variety is not only one of place and history, but has taken root too deep down in the customs and mentality of the people.
Frenchmen All
    The Frenchman of the south does not see life and society with the same eyes as his compatriot of Flanders or Brittany, and even in the south itself there is very little in common between the talkative and braggart people of Marseilles and the cold and taciturn men from the Bordeaux or Basque provinces.
    And yet these people who seem so different, and who
are
so different, share certain very definite characteristics which mark them out as Frenchmen from all the other peoples of Europe and which you must know if you are to understand them at all.
    Provincial France particularly, as compared with Paris, has a number of features of its own which you will always find in any of the thousands of small towns which go to make it up.
    The small provincial town is grouped around a few main buildings: the principal church or maybe the Cathedral with its Bishop’s or Archbishop’s Palace alongside, the Prefecture where the Prefect of Police appointed by the Government has his headquarters, and last but not least the “Mairie,” the Town Hall where the Mayor presides. The latter buildings usually date back to the end of the last century, as is obvious from their architecture. And then, finally, there is the railway station, more often than not located some little way from the centre of the town.
    The whole business of the town goes on around this centre—which is frequently no more than a single street, square or promenade. The hotels, cinemas, cafés, restaurants and shops are all there, a few steps from the Church, the Préfecture and the Town Hall. At certain times of the day the people of the town assemble there with the