APPLICATIOX OF PRINCIPLES. 105 



people that passed for riders ? I can comprehend their 

 not having understood my means at first, since my 

 method was new; but before judging it in so strange a 

 manner, they ought, at least, it seems to me, to have 

 sought to understand it. 



I had found the round of ordinary feats of horseman- 

 ship too limited, since it was sufficient to execute one 

 movement well to immediately practise the others with 

 the same facility. So, it was proved to me that the rider 

 who passed with precision along a straight line sideways 

 {de deux pistes) at a walk, trot and gallop, could go in the 

 same way with the head or the croup to the wall, with the 

 shoulder in, perform the ordinary or reversed volts, the 

 changes and counterchanges of hands, etc., etc. As to 

 the piaffer, it was, as 1 have said, nature alone that 

 settled this. This long and fastidious performance had 

 no other variations than the different titles of the move- 

 ments, since it was sufficient to vanquish one difficulty 

 to be able to surmount all the others. I then created 

 new figures of the manege, the execution of which ren- 

 dered necessary more suppleness, more ensemble, more 

 finish in the education of the horse. This was easy to 

 me with my system ; and to convince my adversaries 

 that there was neither magic nor mystery in my per- 

 formance at the Cirque, I am going to explain by what 

 processes purely equestrian, and even without having 

 recourse to piliers^ cavessons or horse-whips, I have 

 brought my horses to execute the sixteen figures of the 

 manege that appear so extraordinary. 



1. Instantaneous flexion and support in the air of 

 either one of the fore legs, while the other three legs 

 remain fixed to the ground. 



The means of making the horse raise one of his fore 

 legs is very simple, as soon as the animal is perfectly 



