Angelot: A Story of the First Empire

Author of The Heiress of the Forest
NEW YORK Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1902, by THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
YOU FORGET YOURSELF—YOU ARE MAD, SHE SAID HAUGHTILY.


Drink, Monsieur Angelot, said the farmer.
His wife had brought a bottle of the sparkling white wine of the country, and two tall old treasures of cut glass. The wine slipped out in a merry foam. Angelot lifted his glass with a smile and bow to the mistress.
The best wine in the country, he said as he set it down.
The hard lines of her face, so dark, so worn with perpetual grief and toil, softened suddenly as she looked at him, and the farmer from his solemn height broke into a laugh.
Martin's wine, he said. That was before they took him, the last boy. But it is still rather new, Monsieur Angelot, though you are so amiable. Ah, but it is the last good wine I shall ever have here at La Joubardière. I am growing old—see my white hair—I cannot work or make other men work as the boys did. Our vintage used to be one of the sights of the country—I needn't tell you, for you know—but now the vines don't get half the care and labour they did ten years ago; and they feel it, like children, they feel it. Still, there they remain, and give us what fruit they can—but the real children, Monsieur Angelot, their life-blood runs to waste in far-away lands. It does not enrich France. Ah, the vines of Spain will grow the better for it, perhaps—