HOURTIN [rising, to Lucie] Forgive me. [To Brignac] I should have begun instead of ended by congratulating you on the success of your meeting.
Josephine enters with a bottle and glasses on a tray.
BRIGNAC. You must not go without drinking to it, then. Aha, I’m not from Chartres! Montpellier is my native town; close by Montpellier, at least. Palavas—Palavas-les-Flots. In my part of the country an honest man isn’t afraid of a glass of wine. Alicante, you know!
HOURTIN. No, thank you, really.
BRIGNAC [filling his glass] I see. You’re afraid that my Alicante comes from the grocer’s? No, no. My dear sir, I am the son of a wine grower and I can answer for my cellar, I assure you.
HOURTIN. I only drink water.
BRIGNAC. Ah! You belong to that school of doctors to whom wine is anathema. Let me tell you you’re ruining at one stroke the stomach of the north and the purse of the south. Pessimists, that’s what you are. It’s nothing short of treason to slander the good wine of France. Here’s to your health, and to mine, and to France! [He drinks].
HOURTIN [laughing] Allow me to point out that it’s Spanish wine you are drinking.
BRIGNAC [laughing too] Yes; but I only drink this in a small glass. Look here, I’ll prove to you that you’re wrong. My father—you see, I don’t need to go far—died at seventy five, as strong as an oak. He kept his vines and his vines kept him. I can promise you he didn’t only drink water. I don’t say that now and then—market day and so on—he didn’t get a bit lively, a bit too lively, perhaps. Well, did he suffer for it? On the contrary, it gave him strength to support life and made him charitable to other people’s little failings. A good glass of wine never hurt anybody—there’s my witness you see—and my dear father didn’t drink by the thimbleful, I can tell you. But nowadays you think you see drunkards everywhere.
HOURTIN. With good reason.