You reckon up the miles that lie between you
and intrusion. You may walk before you all day long, and not fear to
touch the barrier of your Eden, or stumble out of fairyland into the
land of gin and steam-hammers. And there is an old tale enhances for
the imagination the grandeur of the woods of France, and secures you
in the thought of your seclusion. When Charles VI. hunted in the
time of his wild boyhood near Senlis, there was captured an old stag,
having a collar of bronze about his neck, and these words engraved on
the collar: 'Caesar mihi hoc donavit.' It is no wonder if the minds
of men were moved at this occurrence and they stood aghast to find
themselves thus touching hands with forgotten ages, and following an
antiquity with hound and horn. And even for you, it is scarcely in
an idle curiosity that you ponder how many centuries this stag had
carried its free antlers through the wood, and how many summers and
winters had shone and snowed on the imperial badge. If the extent of
solemn wood could thus safeguard a tall stag from the hunter's hounds
and houses, might not you also play hide-and-seek, in these groves,
with all the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and elude Death,
the mighty hunter, for more than the span of human years? Here,
also, crash his arrows; here, in the farthest glade, sounds the
gallop of the pale horse.
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