The concrete floor of the slaughterhouse in the Parisian suburb of Arcueil was drenched with gore. Steam rose from the still-warm entrails of slaughtered horses. The next beast led toward the block sized up the grisly situation with terrible clarity. Its nostrils flared; its eyes rolled wildly. Screaming, rearing and kicking, it nearly brained a butcher with vicious swipes of its hoofs. The boss of the abattoir, Marius Auteroche, 52, a roly-poly little man whom all Arcueil knows as un roublard (a sharp operator), instantly decided that this horse had too much spirit...
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