The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-01-15 00:00:00

SIXTEEN YEARS AFTERWARDS.

Paris (says the St. James's Gazette) has managed to
obliterate most of the traces left upon it of the
memorable war of 1870-71; but there are plenty of
buildings in the neighbourhood of the city which re-
call very vividly the horrors of that time. Of these
the most impressive, by its vastness and its historical
associations, is the ruined palace of St. Cloud. The
town itself, which the French shattered in their efforts
to dislodge the Prussians from the park beyond, has
been rebuilt; but the palace remains very much as it
appeared when the peace was signed; the shell of a
palace, yet nevertheless so rich in architectural
beauties that it is to be hoped, if onlyin the interest
of art students, that it will not be allowed to share the
fate of the Tuileries. It is only when we take a close
view of it that we perceive what 10 years have done
to make the ruin more picturesquely ruinous. The
great heaps of fallen masonry which cover the ground-
floor, and in which exquisitely sculptured capitals,
cornices, and balustrades mingle with the fragments
of staircases and chimney-stacks, are now green with
mosses and lichens, or are quite hidden by small-
leaved ivy, and support a little forest of self-sown
aspens which rise to the height of 20 or 30 feet; so
that in spring and summer you look through the
scorched window-openings upon a green mass of
trembling leaves. Where the fire and the dropping
shells have rent the walls, pellitory and celandine
have established themselves, and at an angle of the
south wing ivy has climed up a Tuscan column as far
as the first story. A numerous colony of jackdaws,
which have taken possession of the tottering chimney-
stacks, fly in and out of the windows of the rooms
which were royal and imperial bedchambers, and
break the silence of this memory-haunted spot with
their harsh cries.

About a mile and a half across the park is a small
chtiteau which was the favourite summer retreat of
Napoleon 111, and the Empress from the troubled
atmosphere of the Court. This building was not
injured by the war; it remained closed for about 15
years, and then the Government placed it at the dis-
posal of M. Pasteur. The great man does not use
it as a place of residence; but he has added to the
imperial stables, and has turned them into dog-
kennels. It is here that the unlucky wandering dogs
that fall into the clutches of the police—or as many
of them as M. Pasteur needs—are imprisoned. Here
is the virus manufactory—the hope and consolation
of all humanity tortured by the dread of hydro-
phobia. The surrounding country is made dismal by
the howling of M. Pasteur's unhappy pensioners. A
ghastly white wall has been built round an acre or
two of grounl, in the midst of which stands this
veritable Inferno of the canine race. And with all
this the place is beautiful in its moss-grown dilapi-
dation and abandonment, its venerable trees, its ivy-
embowered nooks, its sheltered banks where the first
violas bloom, and is also replete with pathetic in-
terest. A drawing room window at the back of the
house opens upon a broad terrace bordered with fine
trees. Between two of these trees is a worm-eaten
beam, to which are attached a couple of rusty iron
rings. To these rings a swing was once fastened; and
a boy swung here, while a lady watched him from the
window or from the stone seat, now green with lichen,
in the semicircular alcove let into the. wall at the end
of the terrace. The boy was the Prince Imperial, and
the lady was the Empress Eugenie. On the sae
terrace can also be seen the rails of a
is seldom
miniature
rail-
way—another token of a boy's liappy life. It
now that a footstep falls upon the weedy terrace,
where each year's leaves are left to rot. The per.
slams are closed over the windows, and the hour is
in semi-darkness; the place would be utterly silent
but for the howling and barking of the miserable don.