The gentlemen went
about among the carriages, said _tu_ without any preamble to the
women, and squeezed their hands, while their men-servants sat stolid,
like wood, seeming neither to hear nor see.
This race-day was the last under the Empire. It is the one described in
Zola's _Nana_. The prize for the third race was 100,000 francs.
After English horses had been victorious for several years in
succession, the prize was carried off in 1870--as in _Nana_--by a
native-born horse, and the jubilation was great; it was a serious
satisfaction to national vanity.
At that time, the Tuileries were still standing, and I was fond of
walking about the gardens near closing time, when the guard beat the
drums to turn the people out. It was pleasant to hear the rolling of the
drums, which were beaten by two of the Grenadier Guard drummers and a
Turco. Goldschmidt had already written his clever and linguistically
very fine piece of prose about this rolling of the drums and what it
possibly presaged: Napoleon's own expulsion from the Tuileries and the
humiliation of French grandeur before the Prussians, who might one day
come and drum this grandeur out. But Goldschmidt had disfigured the
pretty little piece somewhat by relating that one day when, for an
experiment, he had tried to make his way into the gardens after the
signal for closing had sounded, the Zouave had carelessly levelled his
bayonet at him with the words: _"Ne faites pas des betises!"_ This
levelling of the bayonet on such trivial provocation was too tremendous,
so I made up my mind one evening to try myself.
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