To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "Vive la guerre!" and "Vive la gloire!"
"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"
"Eh bien!" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as ever I heard, "Vive la mort!"
In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup—a coup de l'étrier—to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "Mais pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!"
I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to the quantity—scrupulously taking care that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the tub—that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to—the results of all this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened neighbours.
But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration than I have hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet still, for a moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it be believed—whether it will or not it is, nevertheless, true—that the commencement of the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or the convenience of the proprietors, but by the autorités of each arrondissement? As September wanes and the grape ripens, the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of experts; which jury proceed, from day to day, through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after which, they report to the mayor a special day on which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to begin a fortnight before; another, in a converse locality, may not be ready to commence for a fortnight afterwards. N'importe—the French have a great notion of uniform symmetry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole district starts together—the mayor issuing, par autorité, a highly-official-looking document, which is duly posted by yellow-breeched gens-d'armes, and, before the appearance of which, not a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single grape. Now, what must be the common sense of a country which permits, for one instant, the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical humbug? Only think of a trumpery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the farmers of England that now they might begin to cut their wheat! The mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's throat, and the beadle's staff down the mayor's. But they manage these things—not exactly—better in France. What would France be without les autorités? Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not. Could it set without a sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on France unless they were furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly not. Could the rain rain on France unless each drop came armed with the visé of some wonderful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about the vintage, command it? It is quite clear, that if you have any doubt about these particulars, you know very little of the privileges, the rights, the functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in France.
