“Splendid!  No, it was mere chance!  Never mind—­it’s done it!”

The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every breast.  The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on the vast course itself.  Silence reigned at the outset, as though everyone were holding his breath.  White faces and trembling forms were stretched forward in all directions.  At first Hazard and Cosinus made the running at the head of the rest; Valerio II followed close by, and the field came on in a confused mass behind.  When they passed in front of the stands, thundering over the ground in their course like a sudden stormwind, the mass was already some fourteen lengths in extent.  Frangipane was last, and Nana was slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit.

“Egad!” muttered Labordette, “how the Englishman is pulling it off out there!”

The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and exclamations.  Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright splashes of color which were the jockeys as they rushed through the sunlight.

At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana still behind them.

“By jingo, the Englishman’s gained!  It’s palpable!” said Bordenave.  “Lusignan’s in difficulties, and Valerio II can’t stay.”

“Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!” cried Philippe in an access of patriotic grief.

A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded multitude.  Another defeat!  And with that a strange ardent prayer, which was almost religious, went up for Lusignan, while people heaped abuse on Spirit and his dismal mute of a jockey.  Among the crowd scattered over the grass the wind of excitement put up whole groups of people and set their boot soles flashing in air as they ran.  Horsemen crossed the green at a furious gallop.  And Nana, who was slowly revolving on her own axis, saw beneath her a surging waste of beasts and men, a sea of heads swayed and stirred all round the course by the whirlwind of the race, which clove the horizon with the bright lightning flash of the jockeys.  She had been following their movement from behind while the cruppers sped away and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and then diminished till they looked slender as strands of hair.  Now the horses were running at the end of the course, and she caught a side view of them looking minute and delicate of outline against the green distances of the Bois.  Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump of trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome.

“Don’t talk about it!” cried Georges, who was still full of hope.  “It isn’t over yet.  The Englishman’s touched.”

But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and grew positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit.  Bravo!  That was right!  France needed it!  Spirit first and Frangipane second—­that would be a nasty one for his native land!  He exasperated Labordette, who threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage.