FRANC PICARD AND HIS TIMES 103 



tliey were destined to remain for some years to come, 

 with nothing but the Champ de Mars to knock the 

 horses about upon. 



At Last, in 1850-57, tlie Societe d'Encourafjement 

 (which was a sort of Esau to its twin brother the 

 French Jockey Club in point of birth) commenced a 

 new era, were enabled to turn over a new leaf or a 

 new lease. They obtained (chiefly through the Duke 

 de Morny, that great patron of tlie Turf, the creator 

 of Deauville, tlie originator of the Grand Prix de 

 Paris) from the Government and the municipality of 

 Paris a promise that a ' hippodrome ' should be included 

 in the projected plan for transforming the Bois de Bou- 

 logne into an earthly paradise. In the Longchamps 

 meadows, then, on the borders of the Seine, they ob- 

 tained an allotment of ground, levelled indeed, but per- 

 fectly bare, and, by an arrangement with the munici- 

 pality of Paris, the Societe became lessees of the race- 

 course for fifty years (the lease expiring in 1906), and 

 undertook to pay an annual rent, as well as to build 

 stands, which at the expiration of the lease should 

 become the property of the city. The stands were 

 erected by the city's own architects, MM. Bailly and 

 Davioud, at an expense of 420,000 francs (16,800/.), and 

 subsequent expenses (turfing and what not) brought the 

 amount up to 1,284,981 francs (about 51,395/.). The 

 enclosure was opened on the last Sunday in April 1857, 

 and the opening was a vast success, though the weather 

 was not quite ' conformable.' Seven hundred ' voitures ' 

 (which may, of course, have included the humble 

 'growler' of Paris as well as the ' eleven four-in-hands ') 

 and two hundred and fifty ' cavaliers ' were counted on 

 the ground, and Alphonse on foot was there in his 

 thousands. The first race was then, as it still is. La 



