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They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable boy,
spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his
hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses in their
separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a very
tall chestnut horse, had been brought there, and must be standing
among them. Even more than his mare, Vronsky longed to see Gladi-
ator, whom he had never seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of
the race course it was not merely impossible for him to see the horse,
but improper even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing
along the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box
on the left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with
white legs. He knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a
man turning away from the sight of another man’s open letter, he turned
round and went into Frou-Frou’s stall.
“The horse is here belonging to Mak...Mak...I never can say the
name,” said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger
and dirty nail towards Gladiator’s stall.
“Mahotin? Yes, he’s my most serious rival,” said Vronsky.
“If you were riding him,” said the Englishman, “I’d bet on you.”
“Frou-Frou’s more nervous; he’s stronger,” said Vronsky, smiling at
the compliment to his riding.
“In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck,” said the
Englishman.
Of pluck—that is, energy and courage—Vronsky did not merely
feel that he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was
firmly convinced that no one in the world could have more of this
“pluck” than he had.
“Don’t you think I want more thinning down?”
“Oh, no,” answered the Englishman. “Please, don’t speak loud.
The mare’s fidgety,” he added, nodding towards the horse-box, before
which they were standing, and from which came the sound of restless
stamping in the straw.
He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horse-box, dimly
lighted by one little window. In the horse-box stood a dark bay mare,
with a muzzle on, picking at the fresh straw with her hoofs. Looking
round him in the twilight of the horse-box, Vronsky unconsciously took
in once more in a comprehensive glance all the points of his favorite
mare. Frou-Frou was a beast of medium size, not altogether free from
reproach, from a breeder’s point of view. She was small-boned all over;
though her chest was extremely prominent in front, it was narrow. Her
hind-quarters were a little drooping, and in her fore-legs, and still more
in her hind-legs, there was a noticeable curvature. The muscles of both
hind- and fore-legs were not very thick; but across her shoulders the
mare was exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking now that
she was lean from training. The bones of her legs below the knees
looked no thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily
thick seen from the side. She looked altogether, except across the
shoulders, as it were, pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth.
But she had in the highest degree the quality that makes all defects
forgotten: that quality was blood, the blood that tells, as the English
expression has it. The muscles stood up sharply under the network of
sinews, covered with this delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they
were hard a bone. Her clean-cut head with prominent, bright, spirited
eyes, broadened out at the open nostrils, that showed the red blood in
the cartilage within. About all her figure, and especially her head,
there was a certain expression of energy, and, at the same time, of
softness. She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak
because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.