It was in this spirit that Pol
Staar, first Baron d'Azan, planted in 1809 the broad avenue of
beeches, leading from the chateau straight across the park to the
highroad. But he never saw their glory, for he died when they were
only twenty years old.
His son and successor was of a different timber and grain; less
aristocratic, more bourgeois--a rover, a gambler, a man of fashion.
He migrated from the gaming-tables at Spa to the Bourse at Paris,
perching at many clubs between and beyond, and making seasonal
nests in several places. This left him little time for the Chdteau
d'Azan. But he came there every spring and autumn, and showed the
family fondness for trees in his own fashion. He loved the forests
so much that he ate them. He cut with liberality and planted without
discretion. But for the great avenue of beeches he had a saving
admiration. Not even to support the gaming-table would he have
allowed them to be felled.
When he turned the corner of his thirty-first year he had a sharp
illness, a temporary reformation, and brought home as his wife a
very young lovely actress from the ducal theatre at Saxe-Meiningen.
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