We had to come to that point, not however without murmuring. I addressed an allocution full of reproaches to the wind, when I saw a dish fit to be set before a king, "D'epinards a la graisse de cailles," destined to be eaten with a wine scarcely as good as that of Surene. [Footnote: A village two leagues from Paris, famous for its bad wine. There is a proverb which says that to get rid of a glass of Surene, three things are needed, "a drinker and two men to hold him in case his courage fail." The same may be said of Perieux, which people however will drink.]
MEDITATION IX.
ON DRINKS. [Footnote: This chapter is purely philosophical: a description of different kinds of wine does not enter into the plan I have marked out for myself. If it was, I would never have finished my book.]
By drinks we mean all liquids which mingle with food.
Water seems to be the natural drink. Wherever there is animal life it is found, and replaces milk. For adults it is as necessary as air. WATER. Water is the only fluid which really appeases thirst, and for that reason only a small quantity of it can be drank. The majority of other fluids that man drinks are only palliatives, and had he drank nothing else he never would have said that he drank without being thirsty. QUICK EFFECT OF DRINKS. Drinks are absorbed by the animal economy with the most extreme facility. Their effect is prompt and the relief they furnish is almost instantaneous. Give the most hungry man you can meet with the richest possible food, he will eat with difficulty. Give him a glass of wine or of brandy, and at once he will find himself better.
I can establish this theory by a very remarkable circumstance I received from my nephew, Colonel Guigard, a man not disposed to tell long stories. All may rely upon the accuracy of what he has said.
He was at the head of a detachment returning from the siege of Jaffa, and was but a few hundred paces from the place where he expected to find water, and where he met many of the advanced guard already dead with heat.
Among the victims of this burning climate was a carabinier who was known to many persons of the detachment.
Many of his comrades who approached him for the last time, either to inherit what he had left, or to bid him adieu, were amazed to find his limbs flexible and something flexible around his heart.
"Give him a drop of sacre chien" said the lustig of the troupe. "If he is not too far gone into the other world, he will come back to taste it."