"Hallo!" Master Dick paused in the act of lighting his pipe and dropped the match hurriedly as the flame scorched his fingers.
"It was grown on a hill just outside the town—the Mont-Bazillac. I once drank a bottle of it."
"Lord! You too?…Do tell me what happened!"
"Never," I responded firmly. "The Mont-Bazillac is extinct, swept out of existence by the phylloxera when you were a babe in arms. Infandum jubes renovare— no one any longer can tell you what that wine was. They made it of the ripe grape. It had the raisin flavour with something—no more than a hint—of Madeira in it: the leathery tang—how to describe it?"
"You need not try, when I have two bottles of it at home, at this moment!"
"When I tell you—" I began.
"Oh, but wait till you've heard the story!" he interrupted. "As I was saying, we came to Bergerac and put up for the night at the Couronne d'Or—first-class cooking. Besides ourselves there were three French bagmen at the table d'hote. The usual sort. Jinks, who talks worse French than I do (if that's possible), and doesn't mind, got on terms with them at once.…For my part I can always hit it off with a commercial—it's the sort of mind that appeals to me—and these French bagmen do know something about eating and drinking. That's how it happened. One of them started chaffing us about the ordinaire we were drinking—quite a respectable tap, by the way. He had heard that Englishmen drank only the strongest wine, and drank it in any quantities. Then another said: 'Ah, messieurs, if you would drink for the honour of England, justement you should match yourselves here in this town against the famous Mont-Bazillac.' 'What is this Mont-Bazillac?' we asked: and they told us—well, pretty much what you told me just now—adding, however, that the landlord kept a few precious bottles of it. They were quite fair in their warnings."
"Which, of course, you disregarded."
"For the honour of England. We rang for the landlord—a decent fellow, Sebillot by name—and at first, I may tell you, he wasn't at all keen on producing the stuff; kept protesting that he had but a small half-dozen left, that his daughter was to be married in the autumn, and he had meant to keep it for the wedding banquet. However, the bagmen helping, we persuaded him to bring up two bottles. A frantic price it was, too—frantic for us. Seven francs a bottle."
"It was four francs fifty even in my time."