fteen or twenty miles. The passion of
the Parisian for the country is such that local enterprise could
successfully compete with the Lesser Stage company,--Petites
Messageries, the name given to the Touchard enterprise to distinguish it
from that of the Grandes Messageries of the rue Montmartre. At the time
of which we write, the Touchard success was stimulating speculators.
For every small locality in the neighborhood of Paris there sprang up
schemes of beautiful, rapid, and commodious vehicles, departing and
arriving in Paris at fixed hours, which produced, naturally, a fierce
competition. Beaten on the long distances of twelve to eighteen miles,
the coucou came down to shorter trips, and so lived on for several
years. At last, however, it succumbed to omnibuses, which demonstrated
the possibility of carrying eighteen persons in a vehicle drawn by two
horses. To-day the coucous--if by chance any of those birds of ponderous
flight still linger in the second-hand carriage-shops--might be made,
as to its structure and arrangement, the subject of learned researches
comparable to those of Cuvier on the animals discovered in the chalk
pits of Montmartre.

These petty enterprises, which had struggled since 1822 against the
Touchards, usually found a strong foothold in the good-will and sympathy
of the inhabitants of the districts which they served. The person
undertaking the business as proprietor and conductor was nearly always
an inn-keeper along the route, to whom the beings, things, and interests
with which he had to do were all familiar. He could execute commissions
intelligently; he never asked as much for his little stages, and
therefore obtained more custom than the Touchard coaches. He managed
to elude the necessity of a custom-house permit. If need were, he was
willing to infringe the law as to the number of passengers he might
carry. In short, he possessed the affection of the masses; and thus it
happened that whenever a rival came upon the same route, if his days for
running were not the same as those of the coucou, travellers would put
off their journey to make it with their long-tried coachman, although
his vehicle and his horses might be in a far from reassuring condition.

One of the lines which the Touchards, father and son, endeavored to
monopolize, and the one most stoutly disputed (as indeed it still is),
is that of Paris to Beaumont-sur-Oise,--a line extremely profitable, for
three rival enterprises wor