old hacks, and four-in-hands, sending along their four horses, and mail coaches, where the masters sat on the seats above and left the servants to take care of the hampers of champagne inside, and “spiders,” the immense wheels of which were a flash of glittering steel, and light tandems, which looked as delicately formed as the works of a clock and slipped along amid a peal of little bells.  Every few seconds an equestrian rode by, and a swarm of people on foot rushed in a scared way among the carriages.  On the green the far-off rolling sound which issued from the avenues in the Bois died out suddenly in dull rustlings, and now nothing was audible save the hubbub of the ever-increasing crowds and cries and calls and the crackings of whips in the open.  When the sun, amid bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge of a cloud, a long ray of golden light ran across the field, lit up the harness and the varnished coach panels and touched the ladies’ dresses with fire, while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their boxes, flamed beside their great whips.

Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse and Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him.  As he was hurrying to cross the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got Georges to call him.  Then when he came up: 

“What’s the betting on me?” she asked laughingly.

She referred to the filly Nana, the Nana who had let herself be shamefully beaten in the race for the Prix de Diane and had not even been placed in April and May last when she ran for the Prix des Cars and the Grande Poule des Produits, both of which had been gained by Lusignan, the other horse in the Vandeuvres stable.  Lusignan had all at once become prime favorite, and since yesterday he had been currently taken at two to one.

“Always fifty to one against,” replied Labordette.

“The deuce!  I’m not worth much,” rejoined Nana, amused by the jest.  “I don’t back myself then; no, by jingo!  I don’t put a single louis on myself.”

Labordette went off again in a great hurry, but she recalled him.  She wanted some advice.  Since he kept in touch with the world of trainers and jockeys he had special information about various stables.  His prognostications had come true a score of times already, and people called him the “King of Tipsters.”

“Let’s see, what horses ought I to choose?” said the young woman.  “What’s the betting on the Englishman?”

“Spirit?  Three to one against.  Valerio II, the same.  As to the others, they’re laying twenty-five to one against Cosinus, forty to one against Hazard, thirty to one against Bourn, thirty-five to one against Pichenette, ten to one against Frangipane.”

“No, I don’t bet on the Englishman, I don’t.  I’m a patriot.  Perhaps Valerio II would do, eh?  The Duc de Corbreuse was beaming a little while ago.  Well, no, after all!  Fifty louis on Lusignan; what do you say to that?”