and now Valerio II was distanced,
and she was heading the race, with Spirit two or three necks behind. The
rolling thunder of voices had increased. They were coming in; a storm of
oaths greeted them from the landau.

"Gee up, Lusignan, you great coward! The Englishman's stunning! Do it
again, old boy; do it again! Oh, that Valerio! It's sickening! Oh, the
carcass! My ten louis damned well lost! Nana's the only one! Bravo,
Nana! Bravo!"

And without being aware of it Nana, upon her seat, had begun jerking her
hips and waist as though she were racing herself. She kept striking
her side--she fancied it was a help to the filly. With each stroke she
sighed with fatigue and said in low, anguished tones:

"Go it, go it!"

Then a splendid sight was witnessed. Price, rising in his stirrups
and brandishing his whip, flogged Nana with an arm of iron. The old
shriveled-up child with his long, hard, dead face seemed to breath
flame. And in a fit of furious audacity and triumphant will he put his
heart into the filly, held her up, lifted her forward, drenched in
foam, with eyes of blood. The whole rush of horses passed with a roar of
thunder: it took away people's breaths; it swept the air with it while
the judge sat frigidly waiting, his eye adjusted to its task. Then there
was an immense re-echoing burst of acclamation. With a supreme effort
Price had just flung Nana past the post, thus beating Spirit by a head.

There was an uproar as of a rising tide. "Nana! Nana! Nana!" The cry
rolled up and swelled with the violence of a tempest, till little by
little it filled the distance, the depths of the Bois as far as Mont
Valerien, the meadows of Longchamps and the Plaine de Boulogne. In all
parts of the field the wildest enthusiasm declared itself. "Vive Nana!
Vive la France! Down with England!" The women waved their sunshades; men
leaped and spun round, vociferating as they did so, while others with
shouts of nervous laughter threw their hats in the air. And from the
other side of the course the enclosure made answer; the people on
the stands were stirred, though nothing was distinctly visible save a
tremulous motion of the air, as though an invisible flame were burning
in a brazier above the living mass of gesticulating arms and little
wildly moving faces, where the eyes and gaping mouths looked like black
dots. The noise did not cease but swelled up and recommenced in the
recesses of faraway avenues and among the people encampe