mime, while the lights are blazing and the orchestra
is banging its loudest. The _Grand Prix_, which takes place on the
second Sunday in June, is the climax of the spring gayeties. Up to that
date, the social pace has been getting faster and faster, like the finish
of the big race itself, and fortunately for the lives of the women as
well as the horses, ends as suddenly.

In 1897, the last steeple chase at Auteuil, which precedes the _Grand
Prix_ by one week, was won by a horse belonging to an actress of the
_Theatre Francais_, a lady who has been a great deal before the public
already in connection with the life and death of young Lebaudy. This
youth having had the misfortune to inherit an enormous fortune, while
still a mere boy, plunged into the wildest dissipation, and became the
prey of a band of sharpers and blacklegs. Mlle. Marie Louise Marsy
appears to have been the one person who had a sincere affection for the
unfortunate youth. When his health gave way during his military service,
she threw over her engagement with the _Francais_, and nursed her lover
until his death--a devotion rewarded by the gift of a million.

At the present moment, four or five of the band of self-styled noblemen
who traded on the boy's inexperience and generosity, are serving out
terms in the state prisons for blackmailing, and the _Theatre Francais_
possesses the anomaly of a young and beautiful actress, who runs a racing
stable in her own name.

The _Grand Prix_ dates from the reign of Napoleon III., who, at the
suggestion of the great railway companies, inaugurated this race in 1862,
in imitation of the English Derby, as a means of attracting people to
Paris. The city and the railways each give half of the forty-thousand-
dollar prize. It is the great official race of the year. The President
occupies the central pavilion, surrounded by the members of the cabinet
and the diplomatic corps. On the tribunes and lawn can be seen the _Tout
Paris_--all the celebrities of the great and half-world who play such an
important part in the life of France's capital. The whole colony of the
_Rastaquoueres_, is sure to be there, "_Rastas_," as they are familiarly
called by the Parisians, who make little if any distinction in their
minds between a South American (blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes)
and our own select (?) colony. Apropos of this inability of the
Europeans to appreciate our fine social distinctions, I have been told of