THE FIRST STRUGGLES 51 



near Paris (before the ' venue ' was moved to the Bois 

 de Boulogne), the ground was simply detestable. The 

 Champ de Mars was bad enough, but things were still 

 worse at Satory- Versailles, where, in wet weather, the 

 course was ' so deep in mud that the horses could 

 hardly move,' and in dvj weather ' so hard as to 

 endang-er the stronc^est leg's,' not to mention that 

 ' when the horses galloped the jockeys were blinded 

 by a cloud of dust and small pebbles.' Of course the 

 same difficulties, in a modified degree, have to be 

 encountered sometimes in England on the very best 

 courses, but the Champ de Mars and Satory- Versailles 

 seem to have been intolerable. 



In those early times, when the ' duel ' between the 

 Duke d'Orleans and Lord Henry Seymour (with an 

 Aumont intervening now and then) was the main 

 feature of French horse-racing, the noteworthy meet- 

 ings were very few in number, comprising scarcely any 

 l)eyond the Paris Spring Meeting of four days, the 

 Chantilly Spring Meeting of three days, the Versailles 

 Summer Meeting on two consecutive Sundays, the 

 Chantilly Autumn Meeting of two days running, and 

 the Paris Autumn Meeting of three days. And if the 

 number of meetings was small, so was the number of 

 competing horses, and so was the value of the ' prix.' 

 Hence, to make a good many races with very few 

 horses, the practice of running races in ' heats ' was 

 grossly abused. What was the state of things in 1840 

 may be gathered from a letter in which Madame de 

 Girardin remarks, ' The races on Sunday were favoured 

 with superb weather, and the extraordinary sight was 

 seen of nine horses running togetlier — nine live horses, 

 nine rivals — a rare spectacle in the Champ de Mars. 

 Generally one horse runs all alone, contending against 



