For twenty-four hours before, the whole city is EN FETE, and Paris EN FETE is always a sight worth seeing.The natural gayety of the Parisians, a characteristic noticed (if we are to believe the historians) as far back as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, breaks out in all its amusing spontaneity.If the day is fine, the entire population gives itself up to amusement.From early morning the current sets towards the charming corner of the Bois where the Longchamps race-course lies, picturesquely encircled by the Seine (alive with a thousand boats), and backed by the woody slopes of Suresnes and St.Cloud.By noon every corner and vantage point of the landscape is seized upon, when, with a blare of trumpets and the rattle of cavalry, the President arrives in his turnout A LADAUMONT, two postilions in blue and gold, and a PIQUEUR, preceded by a detachment of the showy GARDES REPUBLICAINS on horseback, and takes his place in the little pavilion where for so many years Eugenie used to sit in state, and which has sheltered so many crowned heads under its simple roof.Faure's arrival is the signal for the racing to begin, from that moment the interest goes on increasing until the great "event." Then in an instant the vast throng of human beings breaks up and flows homeward across the Bois, filling the big Place around the Arc de Triomphe, rolling down the Champs Elysees, in twenty parallel lines of carriages.
第39章 The Grand Prix (2)（1 / 3）