IN most cities, it is impossible to say when the "season" ends.In London and with us in New York it dwindles off without any special finish, but in Paris it closes like a trap-door, or the curtain on the last scene of a pantomime, while the lights are blazing and the orchestra is banging its loudest.The GRAND PRIX, which takes place on the second Sunday in June, is the climax of the spring gayeties.Up to that date, the social pace has been getting faster and faster, like the finish of the big race itself, and fortunately for the lives of the women as well as the horses, ends as suddenly.
In 1897, the last steeple chase at Auteuil, which precedes the GRAND-PRIX by one week, was won by a horse belonging to an actress of the THEATRE FRANCAIS, a lady who has been a great deal before the public already in connection with the life and death of young Lebaudy.This youth having had the misfortune to inherit an enormous fortune, while still a mere boy, plunged into the wildest dissipation, and became the prey of a band of sharpers and blacklegs.Mlle.Marie Louise Marsy appears to have been the one person who had a sincere affection for the unfortunate youth.When his health gave way during his military service, she threw over her engagement with the FRANCAIS, and nursed her lover until his death - a devotion rewarded by the gift of a million.
At the present moment, four or five of the band of self-styled noblemen who traded on the boy's inexperience and generosity, are serving out terms in the state prisons for blackmailing, and the THEATRE FRANCAIS possesses the anomaly of a young and beautiful actress, who runs a racing stable in her own name.
THE GRAND PRIX dates from the reign of Napoleon III., who, at the suggestion of the great railway companies, inaugurated this race in 1862, in imitation of the English Derby, as a means of attracting people to Paris.The city and the railways each give half of the forty-thousand-dollar prize.It is the great official race of the year.The President occupies the central pavilion, surrounded by the members of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps.On the tribunes and lawn can be seen the TOUT PARIS - all the celebrities of the great and half-world who play such an important part in the life of France's capital.The whole colony of the RASTAQUOUERES, is sure to be there, "RASTAS," as they are familiarly called by the Parisians, who make little if any distinction in their minds between a South American (blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes)and our own select (?) colony.Apropos of this inability of the Europeans to appreciate our fine social distinctions, I have been told of a well-born New Yorker who took a French noblewoman rather to task for receiving an American she thought unworthy of notice, and said:
"How can you receive her? Her husband keeps a hotel!""Is that any reason?" asked the French-woman; "I thought all Americans kept hotels."For the GRAND PRIX, every woman not absolutely bankrupt has a new costume, her one idea being a CREATION that will attract attention and eclipse her rivals.The dressmakers have had a busy time of it for weeks before.
Every horse that can stand up is pressed into service for the day.
