"They showed me successively the seven other horses; I examined them
rapidly and absent-mindedly. They were horses like all other horses.
Brutus certainly had something in particular, and I was anxious to make
in his company a short jaunt in the country. He allowed himself to be
saddled, bridled, and mounted like a horse who knows his business, and
so we both started in the quietest way in the world.

"I had at first ridden him with the snaffle, and Brutus had gone off at
a long easy gait, with rather a stiff neck and projected head; but as
soon as I let him feel the curb, he changed with extraordinary rapidity
and suppleness, drawing his head back to his breast, and champing his
bit noisily; then at the same time he took a short gait, which was light
and even, lifting well his feet and striking the sod with the regularity
of a pendulum.

"Chéri's catalogue had not lied; the horse was a good rider--too good a
rider, in fact. I made him trot, then gallop; the horse at the first
suggestion gave me an excellent little trot and an excellent little
gallop, but always plunging to the ground and pulling my arms when I
tried to lift his head. When I wished to quicken his gait, the horse
broke at once. He began to rack in great style, trotting with the
fore-feet and galloping with the hind ones. 'Well,' I said to myself, 'I
see now; I've bought some old horse of the Saumur or Saint-Cyr school,
and it's not on this beast that I'll hunt in eight days.'

"I was about to turn and go home, quite edified as to Brutus's
qualities, when the report of a gun was heard twenty yards away in the
woods. It was one of my keepers who was shooting a rabbit, and who
received some time after a handsome present from my wife for that shot.