ks to be found to-day all over the country. In this first
trial M. de Normandie was the winner. The fate of Chantilly was decided.
Since the suicide--or the assassination--of the last of the Condes the
castle had been abandoned, the duc d'Aumale, its inheritor, being then a
minor. The little town itself seemed dying of exhaustion. It was
resolved to infuse into it a new life by taking advantage of the
exceptional quality of its turf. The soil is a rather hard sand,
resisting pressure, elastic, and covered with a fine thick sward, and of
a natural drainage so excellent that even the longest rains have no
visible effect upon it. On this ground--as good as, if not better than,
that at Newmarket--there is to-day a track of two thousand metres, or a
mile and a quarter--the distance generally adopted in France--with good
turns, excepting the one known as the "Reservoirs," which is rather
awkward, and which has the additional disadvantage of skirting the road
to the training-stables--a temptation to bolt that is sometimes too
strong for horses of a doubtful character. For this reason there is
sometimes a little confusion in the field at this point. Before coming
to the last turn there is a descent, followed by a rise--both of them
pretty stiff--and this undoubtedly has its effect on the result, for the
lazier horses fall away a little on the ascent. Just at this point too a
clump of trees happens to hide the track from the spectators on the
stands, and all the lorgnettes are turned on the summit of the rise to
watch for the reappearance of the horses, who are pretty sure to turn up
in a different order from that in which they were last seen. This crisis
of the race is sometimes very exciting. A magnificent forest of beech
borders and forms a background to the race-course in the rear of the
stands; in front rise the splendid and imposing stables of the duc
d'Aumale, built by Mansard for the Great Conde; on the right is the
pretty Renaissance chateau of His Royal Highness; while the view loses
itself in a vast horizon of distant forest and hills of misty blue. The
stands are the first that were erected in France, and in 1833 they
seemed no doubt the height of comfort and elegance, but to-day they are
quite too small to accommodate the ever-increasing crowd. The stands as
well as the stables, and the race-course itself, all belong to the duc
d'Aumale, who gave a splendid house-warming and brilliant fete last
October to celebrate th