The race began, and
he looked through his glass for the English horse in the front and
could not find her, and the Frenchman beside him cried, "Frou Frou!"
as Frou Frou passed the goal. He lowered his glasses slowly and
unscrewed them very carefully before dropping them back into the case;
then he buckled the strap, and turned and looked about him. Two
Frenchmen who had won a hundred francs between them were jumping and
dancing at his side. He remembered wondering why they did not speak in
English. Then the sunlight changed to a yellow, nasty glare, as though
a calcium light had been turned on the glass and colors, and he pushed
his way back to his carriage, leaning heavily on the servant's arm,
and drove slowly back to Paris, with the driver flecking his horses
fretfully with his whip, for he had wished to wait and see the end of
the races.
He had selected Monte Carlo as the place for it, because it was more
unlike his home than any other spot, and because one summer night,
when he had crossed the lawn from the Casino to the hotel with a gay
party of young men and women, they had come across something under a
bush which they took to be a dog or a man asleep, and one of the men
had stepped forward and touched it with his foot, and had then turned
sharply and said, "Take those girls away"; and while some hurried the
women back, frightened and curious, he and the others had picked up
the body and found it to be that of a young Russian whom they had just
seen losing, with a very bad grace, at the tables.
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