In a twinkling the hard smooth road had an inch depth of mud and water on it. Into this mess those armies of richly dressed ladies had to insert their slippered feet. One pretty girl of twenty or thereabouts, clothed in a shining splendor of costly raiment, looked ruefully out of her carriage, then disclosed a shapely foot and ancle, and pointed the same toward the step—and halted a moment to gather the necessary courage to proceed. The ancle was enclosed in a cream-tinted stocking of so thin a texture that the flesh showed through, and the small foot was sandaled in the daintiest of silken cream-tinted slippers, propped on the tallest of tapering heels. She made up her mind, she accepted the woeful necessity. She advanced that graceful extremity further forth from the sheltering drapery and rested it upon the carriage step; she stood upright and gathered the drapery about her person and out of harm’s reach; then she stepped down and the yellow mud and the stained water swelled up and overflowed the gunwale of the delicate slipper, and I helped her do the shuddering. She waded off with her escort, carrying the most of her clothes on her left arm, and looking like an airy creation of sea-foam and snow which would have seemed to float on the breeze if the tapering cream-tinted calves had been out of sight.

Meantime, while I was enjoying all this scenery, our friend was buying the four tickets. We left the carriage, now, and were admitted; but the moment we were fairly past the ticket-examiner and safe in the grounds, a man in plain clothes halted us and asked in French to be allowed to see our tickets. They were shown to him.

“How much did you pay for these?”

“Twenty francs apiece.”

“Where did you buy them?”

“At the office just outside this gate.”

“Let me have them, if you please. Wait here a moment.” He disappeared in the crowd with our property before any of us thought to inquire what he wanted with it and by what authority he interested himself in our affairs. We stood under the umbrellas and discussed this pirate in a pretty vicious way. We also discussed ourselves and our points of resemblance to other kinds of fools. But presently our host said,—

“Nobody was in fault but me. Perhaps the lesson is worth what it has cost. Wait here a moment and I will go out and buy some more tickets, and this time we will see if we can’t take care of them.”

I remained with the two ladies, and he started off; but at that moment we saw our pirate shouldering his way toward us through the crowd. He gave us two red tickets, two pale yellow ones, and a gold twenty-franc piece, and said,—

“Your road is this way, messieurs,—to the right. Ladies pay only half price.”

Then he bowed politely and immediately turned on his heel and collared another party of green foreigners who were trying to get their ladies in on twenty-franc tickets when ten-franc ones would answer just as well. I have encountered many government officers in Christian lands, whose business it was to see that the sojourner did not swindle the government; but I had never even heard of a government before which appointed officers to keep a lookout and see that the sojourner did not swindle himself.

We moved on, among the trees and the grass plats, and found the grand stand. It was already packed with ladies; there were a thousand or more, and the long ranks rose tier above tier backward to the rear wall of the building. The costumes were so gay and so splendid that this mass of color was like a hillside bedded in flowers. The roof of the building was packed, also—with both sexes. There were several other grand stands like this one, and they were crowded, too. In front of them all, extended a wide fenced space which sloped from the stands to the race track, and this unsheltered ground was furnished with some thousands of splint-bottomed chairs, free to anybody who had a ticket.

After the first race the people deserted the roof of the stand, and we went up there and got front seats and kept them the rest of the day. We could look out over the vast green level, now, which was enclosed by the race-track. It was thronged with carriages, cabs and drags,—a multitudinous host, massed into a compact body—a body to be reckoned rather by acre than by count. The sky was cloudless by this time; therefore the vehicles were without covers, and there was nothing to hide the acres of brilliant costumes or mar the effect of the sun upon them.

The fence-line for nearly half a mile enclosed a deep belt of men, women and children—I don’t know how deep—it was a matter of acres again. When your eye followed the flying horses around, you observed that that entire great field was walled with people. It was a wonderful thing to see. Yes, coming out it had seemed to me that the world was emigrating; the emigration was finished, the world was here assembled together.

It was all beautiful, too; wherever the ground was visible it was carpeted with green grass; the dense green woods surrounded us and shut us into our verdant plain; above the woods rose two or three dim spires and towers of Paris, and in the blue sky floated the gray bubble of a distant balloon, whose passengers probably saw in our assembled world only a something which resembled a pretty extensive gathering of black ants.

Every race was awaited with interest and observed with considerable eagerness—but both the interest and the eagerness were well bred and never boisterous. There was a change, though, when the event of the day approached—the grand twenty-thousand-dollar race.