on the
Rue de Choiseul and the Boulevard des Italiens, where betting on the
English and French races went on night and day; but the police,
following the lead of that of London, stepped in to put an end to this
traffic in contraband goods, and the shops for the sale of this sort of
merchandise are now shut up. But if all this has been done, and if even
those great _voitures de poules_ which once made the most picturesque
ornament of the turf, have been banished out of sight, it has been
impossible to uproot the practice of betting, which has more devotees
to-day than ever before. It has been discovered in other countries than
France that the only way to deal with an ineradicable evil is to check
its growth, and an attempt to prohibit pool-selling a year or two ago
in one of the States of this Union only resulted in the adoption of an
ingenious evasion whereby the _pictures_ of the horses entered were
sold at auction--a practice which is, if I am not misinformed, still
kept up. The same fiction, under another form, is to be seen to-day in
France. In order to bet openly one has to buy an entrance--ticket to
the paddock, which costs him twenty francs, whereas the general entry
to the grounds is but one franc, and any one found betting outside the
enclosure or _enceinte_ of the stables is liable to arrest. The police,
no doubt, are willing to accept the theory that a man who can afford to
pay twenty francs for a little square of rose- or yellow-tinted paper
is rich enough to be allowed to indulge in any other extravagant freaks
that he pleases.

But with all the numerous bets that are made, and the excitement and
interest, that must necessarily be aroused, there is nothing of the
turbulent and uproarious demonstration so characteristic of the English
race-course. The "rough" element is kept away from the French turf,
partly because it would find its surroundings there uncongenial with
its tastes, and partly by the small entrance-fee required; and one is
thus spared at Longchamps the sight of those specimens of the various
forms of human misery and degradation that offend the eye at Epsom and
infest even the more aristocratic meetings of Ascot and Goodwood. At
the French races, too, one never hears the shrieks and howls of an
English crowd, save perhaps when in some very important contest the
favorite is beaten, and even then the yells come from English throats:
it is the bookmakers' song of victory. A stranger at Longchamps