After George had related how he had been married off at twenty-two by his aunt, the Baroness de Stilb, Paul said: "_I_ was married off by a circus charger. I was very nearly forty years of age, and I felt so peacefully settled in my little bachelor habits that, in the best faith in the world, on all occasions, I swore by the gods never to run the great risk of marriage; but I reckoned without the circus charger. "It was in the last days of September, 1864. I had just arrived from Baden-Baden, and my intention was to spend only twenty-four hours in Paris. I had invited four or five of my friends--Callieres, Bernheim, Frondeville, and Valreas--to my place in Poitou for the shooting season. They were to come in the first part of October, and it needed a week to put all in order at Roche-Targe. A letter from my overseer awaited me in Paris, and the letter brought disastrous news; the dogs were well, but out of the dozen hunting horses that I had there, five, during my sojourn at Baden, had fallen sick or lame, and I found myself absolutely forced to get new horses. "I made a tour of the Champs-Elysees sellers, who showed me as hunters a fine collection of broken--down skeletons. Average price, three thousand francs. Roulette had treated me badly of late, and I was neither in the humor, nor had I the funds, to spend in that way seven or eight hundred louis in a morning. "It was a Wednesday, and Cheri was holding his first autumn sale. I went to the Rue de Ponthieu during the day; and there out of the lot, on chance, without inquiry, blindly, by good-luck, and from the mere declarations of the catalogue--'_Excellent hunter, good jumper, has hunted with lady rider_,' etc.--I bought eight horses, which only cost me five thousand francs. Out of eight, I said to myself, there will always be four or five who will go, and who will be good enough to serve as remounts. "Among the horses there was one that I had bought, I must confess, particularly on account of his coat, which was beautiful. The catalogue did not attribute to him any special qualifications for hunting, but limited itself to '_Brutus, riding horse_.' He was a large dapple-gray horse, but never, I think, have I seen gray better dappled; the white coat was strewn almost regularly with beautiful black spots, which were well distributed and well marked. "I left town the next day for Roche-Targe, and the following day, early, they announced to me that the horses had arrived. I at once went down to see them, and my first glance was at Brutus. He had been trotting in my head for forty-eight hours, that devil of a gray horse, and I had a singular desire to know what he was and of what he was capable.