The great source of supply for public vehicles in Paris is the Compagnie Generale des Voitures, one of the most gigantic of the great enterprises of Paris.  It possesses five thousand cabs and over two thousand handsome and stylish voitures de remise.  It furnishes every style; of carriage for hire, from the superb private-looking barouche or landau, with servants in gorgeous livery and splendid blooded horses, or the showy pony-phaeton and low victoria of the cocotte du grand monde, down to the humble one-horse cab.  This beneficent company will furnish you, if desired, with a princely equipage, with armorial bearings, family liveries, etc., all complete and got up specially to suit the ideas of the hirer.  Nine-tenths of the elegant turnouts in Paris are supplied in this manner.  There is a regular tariff for everything:  each additional footman costs so much, there is a fixed charge for powder, for postilions, for a chasseur decked with feathers and gold lace.  You can be as elegant as you please without purchasing a single accessory of your equipage.

The cab-horses of the Compagnie Generale are usually brought from Normandy, and belong to a specially hardy race, such a one being needed to endure the privations and trials to which a Parisian cab-horse is exposed.  Each horse has to be gradually initiated into the duties of his new calling:  he has to be trained to eat at irregular hours, to sleep standing, and to endure the fatigues of the Parisian streets.  Were the country-bred horse to be put at once to full city work, he would die in a week.  He is first sent out for a quarter of a day; then after a week or two for half a day; then for a whole day; and when accustomed to that he is considered fit for night-work.  The horses of the Compagnie Generale remain in the stable one day out of every three.  If well fed, well kept and well looked after, the life of a Paris cab-horse may be prolonged from three to five years, but the latter is the extreme limit.

The Compagnie Generale not only buys its own horses, but constructs its own carriages.  Its coachmen are obliged to pass through a preliminary examination, not only as to their capabilities for driving, but as to their knowledge of the streets of Paris.  But the passage of the law of 1866 has let loose upon the community a swarm of ignorant coachmen, who, assuming the reins and whip, in some instances without any knowledge even of the great thoroughfares of Paris, will lead their unhappy hirer a pretty dance, particularly if he or she is a stranger on a first visit to the great city.  I know of one instance where a lady, desirous of visiting the Pare Monceau, was taken to the extreme northern boundary of the city limits, and was only rescued by the intervention of the police.  Then one must be very particular as to the pronunciation of the name of the street, as so many streets exist in Paris the names of which closely resemble each other when spoken, such as the Rue de Teheran and the Rue de Turin, the Rue du Marl and the Rue d’Aumale, etc.  And if your coachman can make a mistake, you may rest assured he will do it.