clattering spurs, into the Maremma. In the midst of the street,
under our very window, was a little thing like a butterfly, with
yeux de pervenche. You remember, Camarada, Voltaire's love of the
pervenche; we have plucked it, have we not? in his garden of Les
Charmettes. Nous n'irons plus aux bois! Basta!

But to return. There she stood, terror-stricken, petrified, like
her who of old turned her back on Zoar and beheld the incandescent
hurricane of hail smite the City of the Plain! She was dressed in
white muslin, joli comme un coeur, with a myriad frills and
flounces and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. Open-eyed, open-
mouthed, she stared at the tide of foaming steeds, like a maiden
martyr gazing at the on-rushing waves of ocean! "Caramba!" said
Marmalada, "voila une jeune fille pas trop bien gardee!"
Giovanelli turned pale, and, muttering Corpo di Bacco, quaffed a
carafon of green Chartreuse, holding at least a quart, which stood
by him in its native pewter. Young Ponto merely muttered, "Egad!"
I leaped through the open window and landed at her feet.

The racing steeds were within ten yards of us. Calmly I cast my
eye over their points. Far the fleetest, though he did not hold
the lead, was Marmalada's charger, the Atys gelding, by Celerima
out of Sac de Nuit. With one wave of my arm I had placed her on
his crupper, and, with the same action, swung myself into the
saddle. Then, in a flash and thunder of flying horses, we swept
like tawny lightning down the Pincian. The last words I heard from
the club window, through the heliotrope-scented air, were "Thirty
to one on Atys, half only if declared." They were wagering on our
lives; the slang of the paddock was on their lips.