The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet animals. There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.
He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young. And all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with pleasure.
In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes on the days of the horse markets and races:
"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races of the southern provinces and the mountains.
"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about something or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
"There are men of the Basque province—small, muscular and proud, agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and childlike in deed.
"There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and circumstance—educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their Spanish neighbors.