BEFORE THE DAYS OF THE SOCIETE D'ENCOURAGEMENT 7 



the Hon. T. Wliaii-oii was not so compliant in his 

 courtesy as Araunali was, there was no ' deal,' and the 

 Englishman kept his horse. Louis XIV., however, dis- 

 played such extraordinary favour towards the ' horsey ' 

 Englishmen at this time and such appreciation of their 

 pre-eminence in the sport of horse-racing that he ex- 

 tended to the Hon. Bernard Howard (who was the 

 ' Admiral Eons ' of the English Turf in those days, a 

 younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, a ' pal ' of 

 Charles H.'s at Newmarket, and an ancestor of the 

 present Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire) the privilege 

 of driving right into the precincts of the Louvre, a 

 privilege reserved for princes of the blood royal and a 

 few favoured individuals. 



Again we find that in Louis XIV.'s reign, in 1685, 

 there was a race — not quite ' on the square ' this time. 



' One day,' says the narrative, ' when there was a horse race 

 in the warren of Le Pecq (Le Vesinet), wherein a horse of MM. 

 tie Vendome had run against a horse of M. Le Grand (le Grand 

 Ecuyer), there was a warm dispute between those who had 

 betted, the supporters of MM. de Vendome asserting that the 

 English groom who " ran " (courait) [or rode] their horse had 

 allowed himself to be bribed by emissaries of the other party. 

 And things were carried so far that the Duke de Grammont, 

 who was among the supporters of MM. de Vendome, having 

 given a sort of lie to M. Le Grand, he replied to him with a sort 

 of box o' the ear and pulled off his wig. It so happened that 

 the Duke de Grammont had no sword handy, having got rid of 

 his for fear it might be in his way as he accompanied the 

 horses that ran the race ; but his equerry and his supporters 

 clapped hands to their swords against M. Le Grand, the Cheva- 

 lier de Lorraine, and the other people of that party, and the 

 disturbance would have gone very far had not Monseigneur [the 

 Dauphin], who was close by, sent to stop it.' 



This anecdote, which is said to be told in the 



