an enterprise in a race so important and so
trying as this demanded the nicest instinct for pace and the most
thorough knowledge, which as trainer he already possessed, of the
impressionable nature and high qualities of his mare.

The autumn meetings at Chantilly close the legitimate season in France.
The affairs at Tours are of little interest except to the foreign
colony--which at this season of the year is pretty numerous in
Touraine--and to the people of the surrounding country. On these
occasions the cavalry officers in garrison at Tours get up paper hunts,
a species of sport which is rapidly growing in favor and promises to
become a national pastime. Whatever interest attaches to the November
races at Bordeaux is purely local. Turfmen who cannot get through the
winter without the sight of the jockeys' silk jackets and the
bookmakers' mackintoshes must betake themselves to Pau in December. The
first of the four winter meetings takes place during this month upon a
heath at a distance of four kilometres--say about two miles and a
half--from the town. The exceptional climate and situation of Pau, where
the frozen-out fox-hunters of England come to hunt, and where there is a
populous American colony, will no doubt before long give a certain
importance to these races, but just now the local committee is short of
funds and the stakes have been insufficient to offer an attraction to
good horses. Last winter in one of the steeple-chases _all_ the horses
tumbled pell-mell into the river, which was the very first obstacle they
encountered, and although the public was quite used to seeing riders
come to grief, it found the incident somewhat extraordinary.

The meetings at Nice, the queen of all winter residences in Europe, are
much finer and more worthy of attention. They begin in January, and the
programme has to be arranged almost exclusively for steeple-chases and
hurdle-races, as flat-racers are not in condition for running at the
time when the season at Nice is at its height. The greater number, and
particularly the best, of the racers have important engagements for the
spring meetings at Paris and at Chantilly, and even in view of really
valuable prizes they could not afford at this time of year to undergo a
complete preparation, which would advance them too rapidly in their
training and would make it impossible to have them in prime condition in
the spring. The race-course at Nice is charmingly situated in the valley