Of its fourteen original members but two survive, the duc de Nemours
and M. Ernest Leroy. The other twelve were His Royal Highness the duc
d'Orleans, M. Rieussec, who was killed by the infernal machine of
Fieschi, the comte de Cambis, equerry to the duc d'Orleans, Count
Demidoff, Fasquel, the chevalier de Machado, the prince de la Moskowa,
M. de Normandie, Lord Henry Seymour, Achille Delamarre, Charles Lafitte
and Caccia. To these fourteen gentlemen were soon added others of the
highest rank or of the first position in the aristocratic world of
Paris. People began to talk with bated breath of the Jockey Club and of
its doings, and strange stories were whispered of the habits of some of
its distinguished members. The eccentricities of Count Demidoff and of
Major Frazer, the obstreperous fooleries of Lord Henry Seymour, the
studied extravagances of Comte d'Alton-Shee, created in the public mind
the impression that the club was nothing less than a sort of infernal
pit, peopled by wicked dandies like Balzac's De Marsay, Maxime de
Trailles, Rastignac, etc. Even the box of the club at the opera was
dubbed with the uncanny nickname _loge infernale_, and the talk of the
town ran upon the frightful sums lost and won every night at the tables
of the exclusive _cercle_, while the nocturnal passer-by pointed with a
shudder to the windows of the first floor at the corner of the Rue de
Grammont and the Boulevard, glimmering until morning dawn with a light
altogether satanic.
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