he first order, though the effort
has cost him a very considerable sum. Indeed, he himself admits that to
cover expenses he would have to make as much as thirty thousand pounds
every year. Four times victorious in the French Derby before 1870, he
has since repeated this success for two successive years--in 1878 with
Insulaire, and in 1879 with Zut. His colors (blue jacket with red
sleeves and a red cap) are as well known in England as in his own
country. Within the last six years he has three times won the Oaks at
Epsom with Regalia, Reine and Camelia, the Goodwood Cup with Flageolet,
the two thousand guineas and the Middlepark and Dewhurst Plates with
Chamant. On the 12th of June, last year, at Ascot, he gained two races
out of three, and in the third one of his horses came in second.

But the count is by no means always a winner, nor does he always win
with the horse that, by all signs, ought to be the victor. He has
somehow acquired, whether justly or not, the reputation of being a
"knowing hand" upon the turf, and all turfmen will understand what is
implied in the term, whether of good or of evil. His stable has been
called a "surprise-box," which simply means that the "horse carrying
the first colors does not always carry the money;" that people who
think they know the merits of his horses frequently lose a good deal by
the unexpected turn of affairs upon the track; and that the count, in
short, manages to take care of himself in exercising the undoubted
right of an owner, as by rule established, to win if he can with any
one of the horses that he may have running together for any given
event. Nothing dishonorable, according to the laws of the turf, has
ever been proved, nor perhaps even been charged, against him; but as
one of his countrymen, from whom I have just now quoted, remarks, "He
is fond of showing to demonstration that a man does not keep two
hundred horses in training just to amuse the gallery."

These repeated triumphs, as well as the not less frequent ones of MM.
Lefevre, Lupin and de Juigne, have naturally set the English
a-thinking. They have to admit that the time has passed when their
handicappers could contemptuously give a French horse weights in his
favor, and a party headed by Lords Falmouth, Hardwicke and Vivian and
Sir John Astley of the London Jockey Club has been formed with the
object of bringing about some modifications of the international code.

A war of words has ensued between Admi