The broad esplanade was full of sun, and dogs, and sailors, as we debouched upon it with our note-books, sketch-books, and the Kodak, at some nine o’clock of the morning. A steamer was hooting at the wooden pier over which we had crawled in gloomy fatigue the night before; a boat with a big lug-sail was performing wonderful and strange manœuvres of going about with the help of the current; and a full-rigged ship, with a dazzling green hull, was being towed up to Bordeaux by a black and misshapen tug-boat called Ercule, the family name of all Bordeaux tug-boats. It seemed to be a market or fête day of a minor sort in Pauillac; something connected with a saint, probably, which in Ireland would have meant that every one would have gone to Mass and done no work for the rest of the day; but here every one worked, just as they did on Sunday, and the people who had no work to do went about and enjoyed themselves. We remember once asking a man at home why the people were going to Mass and what holy day it was. He said he didn’t rightly know, but he thought the ‘Blessed Vargin’ was implicated. We did not find out who or what it was that was implicated in the Pauillac fête, but we take this opportunity of thanking them for celebrating themselves on our first day in the Médoc. All manner of unexpected things and people went by on their way to the town that straggled on the hill behind the Boulevard de la
A MÉDOC DOG-CART.
Marine. Donkey-carts, waggons, and charettes, driven by brown-faced, white-capped women, or boys in flat felt caps of scarlet or blue,—the berets that are found up the west of France from Biarritz to Brittany,—a man on stilts, stalking by with the grave composure of a heron; and, creeping through the midst of all these, came now and again a long cart drawn by fawn-coloured oxen, who paced with that swinging saunter that became afterwards so familiar to us, their faces and sleek bodies covered absurdly with a thick netted material to keep the flies off, and their neatly-shod hoofs keeping time like clockwork.
We had been told by Madame the way we should go, and we walked in it with alacrity, especially when it involved leaving the white, sandy high-road, and crossing a vineyard, the property of our amiable hostess. It was the first time that we had been let loose on grapes in this fashion, and we fell upon them with an incredulous delight, that was scarcely checked by the hideous discovery made at this period, that the dog and the monkey had followed us. The monkey was chained to the dog’s collar,—that was always something,—but it was none the less disturbing to see suddenly, while stooping to cut one of the long blue bunches, the little black face with its blinking eyes looking greedily and cunningly through the leaves, and the nimble clammy claw extended imperiously for the grapes that we were afraid to refuse. They were delicious grapes—small and sweet and ‘inconvayniently crowded’ with juice, as a certain Irish wood was reputed to be with woodcock, and so tightly packed on their stalks that it was difficult to pick the first one of the bunch. We, however, overcame this difficulty nobly.
Our arrival at the village of St. Lambert was attended with considerable pomp. The procession was headed by the proprietor, who had overtaken us on his tricycle, and now rode very slowly and majestically before us, eating grapes; next came César, the dog, bestridden by the monkey (also eating grapes), and thereby inspiring the most agonising panic in all other dogs along the road; then we came, carrying the Kodak, and bending under bunches of grapes; and after us an enthusiastic body, composed of the infant population of St. Lambert, announcing in clear tones, to all whom it might concern, that ‘These’—meaning us—were ‘des étrangères.’
The procession was halted about halfway through the straggling village; the tricycle turned up a side street, and the next moment we had our first sight of wine-making.
There was an archway in one of the long white houses, an archway of a shape that we knew very well before we left the Médoc. It was a kind of large window in the wall, about four feet from the ground, with a heap of brown and bare grape stalks outside it, and, looking in, we saw in full swing the working of one of the oldest trades in the world. It must be admitted that we found it startling. In the mouth of the archway was a broad and shallow wooden receptacle, called the pressoir; heaped up in it were mounds of grapes, all black and shining, with their splendid indigo bloom gone for ever, and, splashing about amongst them, barefooted, and ankle-deep in the thick magenta juice, were the treaders of the winepress. It was those bare feet, crimsoned with juice, that took our whole attention for the first few minutes. We had been given uncertain warnings as to what we might or might not see, but we had always hoped against
A TREADER OF THE WINEPRESS.