THREE- YEAR-OLDS. 1 77 



implied or proved, whereas in this instance there was never 

 the faintest imputation of dishonesty against any of the parties 

 concerned. It was an imaginary allegation of ' accidentally 

 changed at nurse ; ' it was investigated, disproved, and there an 

 end. We have no more to say on the matter, unless it be a 

 word of praise for the thoroughly honourable and straightfor- 

 ward behaviour throughout the whole business of the Duke 

 of Westminster, of Mr. Brewer, of Blanton, and in fact of all 

 those mainly interested in the issue. 



No man has accomplished more turf surprises than did 

 Thomas Jennings during the time he trained for the late Count 

 Lagrange ; but never did he make the general body of backers 

 and bookmakers ' sit up' so effectually as in the year 1865, 

 when with Gladiateur he made a clean sweep of the three great 

 three-year-old prizes in England, besides the Grand Prix, and 

 such sweet little fish as the Drawing-Room at Goodwood, 

 the Doncaster Stakes, the Newmarket Derby, and the Grand 

 Prix du Prince Imperial at Paris in the autumn, during which 

 series of victories the French champion was only once fairly ex- 

 tended, viz. by Archimedes in the Two Thousand, and once 

 only during his three-year-old career was he beaten, when he 

 essayed the Cambridgeshire hill under the hopeless weight of 

 9 st. 12 Ibs. 



That the Count and Jennings had eaten of the tree of 

 knowledge before sending their colt to the post for the Two 

 Thousand, the following trials as clearly demonstrate as does 

 the starting price of 100 to 15 show that they knew when 

 silence was golden. Though for a long time at the head of 

 a great racing confederacy, that inscrutable Count was never 

 known to have been betrayed, either by partners or servants, 

 perhaps because he never told the former anything, and also 

 because he was what Count Paul Daru once described him to 

 be un homme qui a toujours su sefaire obetr. 



On April 19, the Wednesday in the Craven Meeting, 1865, 

 Gladiateur was tried and thus acquitted himself : 



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