102 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
The most inoffensive of all these horses, but not the least es- 
timable, is the hack-horse — a modest race, of Breton origin, which 
does not invoke war with its smoking nostrils. It is the emblem 
of the humble laborer, whose crushed ambition leaves him to the 
impulses of necessity and misery, who finds scarce a shelter 
against the severity of the weather, and whose head fatigue bows 
down toward the earth. Hardly will his executioner allow'^ him 
time, between blows, to take his meals. Alas ! this executioner 
himself is tortured by the spur of a master still more barbarous 
and unpitying — competition — the civilized fury which destroys all 
pity in the heart of the manufacturer, and awakes, with the lash, 
the child who has fallen asleep over its task in the English factories. 
The stage hack relates the different phases of the horse^s for- 
tune — unforeseen falls — splendors eclipsed. I know not whence 
comes that lying adage, that Paris is the hell of horses and the 
Paradise of women. If ever two destinies were alike, it is sure- 
ly those of the beautiful woman and the fine horse of Paris — both 
considered as objects of luxury. The Boulevards, and the forest 
of parks, furnish a Paradise for both while their beauty, health, 
and youth last. The omnibus : prostitution — public contempt — 
there is their hell And the two noble creatures, whom 
heaven had endowed with so many means of pleasing, arrive at the 
fatal term, Montfaucon and the hospital, by the same road. What 
queen of fashion and pleasure has not sometimes had to repel an 
obstinate reminiscence or anticipating thought of humiliation and 
disgrace — a chapter from the history of the omnibus horse. 
That centre of pleasure — that gulf of fortunes, called Paris, an- 
nually consumes near fifteen thousand horses. It is nearly the 
same number of young virgins which the poor families of Paris de- 
liver each year as a tribute to the minotaur of prostitution. 
Yes; the horse of France is very low, and its fine gentlemen 
also. The posterity of Alphanes and of Bayard draw hand-carts, 
while the peer of France assassinates his wife, or trades in mining 
grants, and the son of proud houses sells the blazons of his fathers, 
to serve as signs to pawnbrokers’ shops. 
Where, I once asked, are those robust children of Gaul, who 
formerly traversed at a single bound the Alps, the Apennines, the 
