182 HORSE-KACING IN FRANCE 



CHAPTER X. 



M. LEFEVKE's campaign of 1871 THE LAGRANGE- 



LEFEVRE ' FUSION ' — LORD FALMOUTH's HOWL FOR 

 ' RECIPROCITY.' 



Lamentable as may have been the recklessness witli 

 which the French undertook to march at a moment's 

 notice ' k Berhn,' equally admirable is the ease and 

 readiness with which they raised their millions of ransom 

 from their midst and themselves from disaster and de- 

 spondency. Before 1871 had arrived at its latter end 

 our neighbours were at their horse-racing again, almost 

 as if nothing had happened. Only they had lost — ' it 

 mio-ht be for years and it mig^ht be for ever ' — their 

 chances at Baden-Baden, which had been a kind of 

 ' Tom Tiddler's ground ' to them, where they had picked 

 up gold and silver, yellow mark pieces and white, every 

 autumn for years : the Grand Prix de Bade had been as 

 o-ood as a sift to them since the establishment of the 

 racecourse at Iffezheim (under the auspices of the 

 astute M. Benazet, who foresaw 'grist to his mill,' 

 advantage to his ' hell ' thereby) in 1858, since when 

 the race had been won regularly every year by a 

 Frenchman with a French horse — by M. A. Lupin with 

 La Maladetta, Baron Niviere with Geologic, M. Benoist 

 with Capucine, M. P. Aumont with Mon Etoile, Count F. 

 de Lagrange with Stradella, M. A. de Montgomery with 



