Great respect is paid to the military in France, as Mr. Jorrocks found by all the hack, cab, and _fiacre _ drivers pulling up and making way for him to pass, as the old crocodile-backed white horse slowly dragged its long length to the gateway of the Champ de Mars. Here the guard, both horse and foot, saluted him, which he politely acknowledged, under direction of the Countess, by raising his _chapeau bras_, and a subaltern was dispatched by the officer in command to conduct him to the place appointed for the carriages to stand. But for this piece of attention Mr. Jorrocks would certainly have drawn up at the splendid building of the École Militaire, standing as it does like a grand stand in the centre of the gravelly dusty plain of the Champ de Mars. The officer, having speared his way through the crowd with the usual courtesy of a Frenchman, at length drew up the cab in a long line of anonymous vehicles under the rows of stunted elms by the stone-lined ditch, on the southern side of the plain when, turning his charger round, he saluted Mr. Jorrocks, and bumped off at a trot. Mr. Jorrocks then stuck the pig-driving whip into the socket, and throwing forward the apron, handed out the Countess, and installed Agamemnon in the cab.
A fine day and a crowd make the French people thoroughly happy, and on this afternoon the sun shone brightly and warmly on the land;--still there was no apparently settled purpose for the assembling of the multitude, who formed themselves in groups upon the plain, or lined the grass-burnt mounds at the sides, in most independent parties. The Champ de Mars forms a regular parallelogram of 2700 feet by 1320, and the course, which is of an oblong form, comprises a circuit of the whole, and is marked out with strong posts and ropes. Within the course, equestrians--or more properly speaking, "men on horseback"--are admitted under the surveillance of a regiment of cavalry, while infantry and cavalry are placed in all directions with drawn swords and fixed bayonets to preserve order. Being a gravelly sandy soil, in almost daily requisition for the exercise and training of troops, no symptoms of vegetation can be expected, and the course is as hard as the ride in Rotten Row or up to Kensington Gardens.