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Updated: May 12, 2025
Between this sterile, uninhabitable solitude and the precipitous, broken ridge forming the north-eastern boundary of the Loiret lies Courance. No road leads thitherward, no path approaches its forgotten gate. The stream which formerly flowed past the entrance-lodge is dammed up by the fallen bridge and spreads out in a broad morass.
From every direction came to Courance, where the ceremony was to be performed in the chapel, the great families of the Loiret a more distinguished assembly of the aristocracy of France than could have been gathered elsewhere beyond the limits of Paris and the court.
The idle life of a luxurious court, growing more and more effeminate in the long years of peace that followed Fontenoy, seems to have ill suited this scion of the Courance family, ever in history a race of soldiers, men of high spirit and stirring temper. With many other gentlemen of France he espoused as a volunteer the cause of Maria Theresa.
To this uninviting neighborhood came the coursing-party at the time appointed. After a sufficiently successful day's sport the American guests accepted an invitation to pass the night with the mayor of Mont Plésis, the other gentlemen returning to Fontainebleau. Monsieur le Maire loitered by the way until the last of the hunters had disappeared, and then struck off across country toward Courance.
Furthermore, a superstitious dread of any approach to the place prevails among the people, and this feeling has been strong enough to defeat the several secret explorations known to have been undertaken. Courance, then, remained but a name and a shadow for many and many a year, drifting slowly back to the sole dominion of Nature and out of the very memory of mankind.
There are several battle-pieces by Gerard Lairesse, in one of which, a dashing cavalry-charge, the Courance banner leads the van. Boucher has two landscapes, scenes in the park according to M. Gambeau very careful, faithful works; and there are several large pictures by Vien, similar to his suburban studies in the Louvre.
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