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 would perceive at once that racing has no hold upon the popular heart, and that, so far as it is an amusement at all apart from the gambling spirit evoked, it is merely the hobby and pastime of a certain number of idle gentlemen. As to the great mass of spectators, who are not interested in the betting, they go to Longchamps as they would go to any place where uniforms and pretty toilettes and fine carriages are to be seen; for the Parisian, as one of them has well said, "never misses a review, and he goes to the races, although he understands nothing about them: the horses scarcely interest him at all. But there he is because he must do as 'all Paris' does: he even tries to master a few words of the barbarous jargon which it is considered _bon-ton_ to speak at these places, for it seems that the French language, so rich, so flexible, so accurate, is insufficient to express the relations and affinities between man and the horse."