THE HORSE : THE GENTLEMAN. 
93 
The Horse is the exponent of the society. Tell me the horse of 
a people, and I will tell you its morals and its institutions. 
The history of the horse is that of humanity, because the horse 
is the personification of the aristocracy of blood, of the warrior 
caste, and because all societies, alas ! must pass through the op- 
pression of the warrior caste. 
There is but one true horse in the world, the Arab stallion. I 
know the world is full of ambitious quadrupeds, which illegally 
arrogate this title to themselves, but most of these usurpers may 
be advantageously replaced by steam or by the camel. 
The true horse is the emblem of the true gentleman. 
I should sincerely pity the prosaic and limited spirit that could 
contest with me the analogical relationship between the horse and 
the gentleman, so perfect is the resemblance between the two 
types. Either the Arab stallion means nothing at all or he means 
the cavalier. We must choose between the two. 
See how the noble animal invokes war with all the movements 
of his body and with all the springs of his soul. His glowing 
nostrils dilate and smoke, his impatient feet excavate the soil, his 
ardent eye darts lightning and devours space, his mouth champs 
the bit and whitens it with foam, his elegant free-flowing mane 
trembles and rises with his wrath, his tail rounds itself into a 
plume. Listen to the neigh that his jealous fury accentuates ; to 
that voice more warlike than the clarion’s ; it is still a provocation 
to the combat, a menace of death. If you do not recognize there 
the knight of the legend, the hero of the crusades, the cavalier 
with burnished arms and waving plumes, anxious to shine and to 
please, eager for the tournament, for dangers, pomp, and tumult, 
what farther need be said ? 
The wild horse who lives to-day still as master over a large 
third of the globe’s surface, has indeed the proud character, the 
warlike habits, the chivalric manners of the Arab courser ; but 
you must not ask of him that exquisite grace, that courtesy of 
manners, that perfect good keeping ; elegances which only educa- 
tion and the contact of the great world can give. Swiftness 
itself is a quality which develops itself completely in the horse, 
only under the influence of Man. The whole space extending 
