This latter proprietor, the most celebrated of all—­in the sense of being the most widely known and the most talked about—­I have reserved for the end of my catalogue.  Comte de Lagrange made his debut upon the turf in the year 1857, now more than twenty years ago, by buying outright the great stable of M. Alexander Aumont, which boasted at that time amongst its distinguished ornaments the famous Monarque, who had, before passing into the hands of his new owner, gained eight races in eight run, and who, under the colors of the comte, almost repeated the feat by winning eight in nine; and of these two were the Goodwood Cup and the Newmarket Handicap.  Afterward, at the Dangu stud, he achieved a fame of another sort, but in the eyes of horsemen perhaps still more important.  Never has sire transmitted to his colts his own best qualities with such certainty and regularity.  Hospodar, Le Mandarin, Trocadero were amongst his invaluable gifts to the comte, but his crowning glory is the paternity of the illustrious Gladiateur, the Eclipse of modern times.  Gladiateur, said the baron d’Etreilly, recalls Monarque as one hundred recalls ten.  There were the very same lines, the same length of clean muscular neck well set on the same deep and grandly-placed shoulders, the same arching of the loins, the same contour of hips and quarters, but all in proportions so colossal that every one who saw him, no matter how indifferent to horseflesh in general, remained transfixed in admiration of a living machine of such gigantic power.

The first appearance of Gladiateur upon the race-course was at the Newmarket autumn meeting of 1864, where he won the Clearwell Stakes, beating a field of twelve horses.  He was kept sufficiently “shady,” however, during the winter to enable his owner to make some advantageous bets upon him, though it required careful management to conceal his extraordinary powers.  His training remains a legend in the annals of the stables of Royal-Lieu, where the jockeys will tell you how he completely knocked all the other horses out of time, and how two or three of the very best put in relay to wait upon him were not enough to cover the distance.  Fille-de-l’Air herself had to be sacrificed, and it was in one of these terrible gallops that she finished her career as a runner.  Mandarin alone stood out, but even he, they say, showed such mortal terror of the trial that when he was led out to accompany his redoubtable brother he trembled from head to foot, bathed in sweat.  In 1865, Gladiateur gained the two thousand guineas and the Derby at Epsom, and for the first time the blue ribbon was borne away from the English.  “When Gladiateur runs,” said the English papers at this time, “the other horses hardly seem to move.”  The next month he ran for the Grand Prix de Paris.  His jockey, Harry Grimshaw, had the coquetry to keep him in the rear of the field almost to the end, as if he were taking a gallop for exercise, and when Vertugadin reached the last turn