Messageries, the name given to the Touchard enterprise to distinguish
it from that of the Grandes Messageries of the rue Montmartre. At the
time of which we write, the Touchard success was stimulating
speculators. For every small locality in the neighborhood of Paris
there sprang up schemes of beautiful, rapid, and commodious vehicles,
departing and arriving in Paris at fixed hours, which produced,
naturally, a fierce competition. Beaten on the long distances of
twelve to eighteen miles, the coucou came down to shorter trips, and
so lived on for several years. At last, however, it succumbed to
omnibuses, which demonstrated the possibility of carrying eighteen
persons in a vehicle drawn by two horses. To-day the coucous--if by
chance any of those birds of ponderous flight still linger in the
second-hand carriage-shops--might be made, as to its structure and
arrangement, the subject of learned researches comparable to those of
Cuvier on the animals discovered in the chalk pits of Montmartre.

These petty enterprises, which had struggled since 1822 against the
Touchards, usually found a strong foothold in the good-will and
sympathy of the inhabitants of the districts which they served. The
person undertaking the business as proprietor and conductor was nearly
always an inn-keeper along the route, to whom the beings, things, and
interests with which he had to do were all familiar. He could execute
commissions intelligently; he never asked as much for his little
stages, and therefore obtained more custom than the Touchard coaches.
He managed to elude the necessity of a custom-house permit. If need
were, he was willing to infringe the law as to the number of
passengers he might carry. In short, he possessed the affection of the
masses; and thus it happened that whenever a rival came upon the same
route, if his days for running were not the same as those of the
coucou, travellers would put off their journey to make it with their