APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES. 203 



least, it seems to me, to have sought to un- 

 derstand it. 



I had found the round of ordinary eques- 

 trian feats too limited ; since it was sufficient 

 to execute one movement well, to imme- 

 diately 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 counter- 

 changes of hands, &c. &c. As to the piaffer, 

 it was, as I have said, nature alone that 

 settled this. This long and fastidious per- 

 formance had no other variations than the 

 different titles of the movements, 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 exe- 



