I

Until now, the usefulness of snail racing has not been officially recognized by the public authorities.

No one has ever shown what we might gain, perhaps nothing at all, by improving this breed strictly in terms of speed.

But is this practical side of sport necessary for the enjoyment of true sports enthusiasts?

And are they not simply seeking ever-renewed thrills in watching the contests of the stadium?

All Horace Planchet asked of snail races was that they make the hours seem shorter in the little office that life's difficulties obliged him to occupy, on the third floor of the bank Lenormand Fils et Normand.

The overdue reports he was assigned to copy would hardly have filled his time so pleasantly…

Besides, Horace, like all noble souls, had an aversion to paid work.

He kept four vigorous Burgundy snails of absolutely pure stock in a drawer.

On their shells, in fine, rounded script, the bank clerk had inscribed heroic, picturesque, or familiar names, according to each creature’s apparent character.

There were Minotaure, Isaac, Bilatéral, and finally Adolphe, the champion of the stable.

The snail-racing track, if the reader will pardon the hybrid name, consisted of a large sheet of official-format paper (an involuntary gift from the bank): three carefully drawn lines marked out four separate lanes.

Horace, acting as starter, judge at the start and finish, and race steward, was armed with a light wooden ruler and steered any wayward snail back onto the proper course when it wandered into a neighbor’s lane.

We must face the facts: the splendid enthusiasm for sport that has swept up some of our fellow citizens over the past twenty years has by no means been shared by everyone.

There are still plenty of narrow-minded, sour-tempered people who “just don’t get it.”

Among them was Mr. Léonard Océan, an authorized senior officer at the bank where young Horace Planchet worked.

Behind Mr. Planchet’s racetrack table stood a door leading to Mr. Léonard Océan’s office, an unfortunate arrangement that allowed the bank officer to enter Mr. Planchet’s sporting headquarters without a sound, while the latter, wholly absorbed in his fascinating pursuits, failed to notice this deplorable intrusion in time.

For several moments Mr. Océan had been watching, as an uninitiated outsider, the contest between Adolphe and Bilatéral.

Horace, meanwhile, was trembling with excitement, anxious to see whether Adolphe was about to tarnish his unbroken winning streak with a defeat.

So Mr. Océan had to touch the enthusiast on the shoulder twice, the second time rather firmly, before he would agree to turn his head…

“Would you come with me to the cashier’s desk?” asked Mr. Océan, with the exaggerated courtesy of a manager who has suddenly ceased to regard the man before him as an employee.

At the cashier’s office, Mr. Planchet received his salary for the current month, along with a respectable though modest sum provided for in his employment agreement in the event of dismissal.

Deprived of one of its members, the bank of Lenormand fils et Normand, in its tall dressed-stone building, did not seem to have lost an atom of its solidity.

Meanwhile, Mr. Horace Planchet walked briskly away from his usual business district, his spirits lifted by the change in his life and his pocket heavy with fourteen hundred francs, money that, in truth, could hardly be said to be entirely free of claims, though no more than two hundred and fifty francs would go toward settling them, namely the same sum owed in arrears to the concierge who also did the cleaning and looked after Mr. Planchet’s little furnished room.

Now standing before a poster, Mr. Planchet weighed its wording with a certain excitement.

The poster advertised the casino at Bront-les-Eaux and a game of “boule” that had been running since May.

Now it was June, and to his duties as an organizer of snail races Mr. Planchet added another equally interesting specialty: devising betting systems for the game of boule.

His desk drawer at the bank, which he had emptied after visiting the cashier, had contained, besides his four purebred snails and their lettuce leaves (all of which were now tucked away in a trouser pocket), a thick sheaf of notes: calculations painstakingly checked against fifteen thousand rounds of boule, which had made it possible to devise an extraordinary system guaranteeing an income of 768 (seven hundred and sixty-eight) francs a day in return for nine hours of actual attendance at the gaming table.

That was how Mr. Océan, who imagined he had ruined the career of this twenty-nine-year-old man, a genius wasting away in an office, had actually set him on the road to a billion francs.

Mr. Horace Planchet had been an orphan since the age of twelve and received two thousand francs a year from his uncle, Mr. Luc Planchet, an elderly bachelor who owned a great many farms in the prosperous country of Uruguay.

The last two banknotes he had received had been used the previous autumn to settle losses on gold-mining and oil-company shares.

The next payment was not expected until October, by which time Mr. Planchet, enriched by boule, would be able to spend those paltry two thousand francs on some trinket.

By now, young Horace had reached the doorstep of his home.

The concierge was standing in her doorway…

“Madame Jarru, I am leaving this evening on a rather long trip.”

“My suitcase needs packing.”

“Just let me go and fetch my milk, and I’ll be right with you.”

Horace went up to his quarters, taking the lift as far as the sixth floor.

At that altitude, a short additional staircase climbed steeply to a still higher summit.

Planchet’s room was not excessively small.

At one point the ceiling sloped gracefully, leaving an opening for something that was neither quite a window nor quite a dormer window (Rostand would have made a pretty poem out of it).

While waiting for the concierge, Planchet decided that he ought to devote a few moments to reflection.

He stretched out on his bed after carefully removing his finest (and shabbiest) morning coat, which he laid on a chair.

Then he closed his eyes to collect and concentrate his thoughts better.

He would have about a thousand francs left after paying for his trip and settling his most pressing debts.

He would divide that sum into four equal portions… four portions… of two hundred and fifty… two hundred and fifty…

He was checking into a simple hotel… rather rustic… yes… beside that road… a country hotel… a broad meadow… greenery… water…

Then he glided along the water toward an Arab city bristling with towers…

Madame Jarru, coming in after knocking twice without receiving an answer, respected other people’s sleep, even sleep during the day… (as one might expect of a policeman’s wife when he sometimes works night shifts…).

So she gently slipped the letter from the three o’clock mail, which she was holding, into a pocket of his jacket, then began packing his suitcase, casting an occasional motherly glance at the young man stretched out on the bed, without noticing that one, then two, then three snails, eager for air and light, were escaping from his trouser pocket.