‘De ce nectar délicieux,
Qui pétille dans vos beaux yeux
Mieux qu’il ne brille dans mon verre.’
Since these lines were penned, many thousands of bright eyes have so borrowed an additional lustre.
It would certainly be going too far to suggest that flirtation and Champagne must have been introduced simultaneously, yet the former can only have attained perfection since the advent of the latter. Only consider what a failure a picnic or a garden-or water-party, or any other kind of entertainment to which that much-abused term fête champêtre is applied, and where flirtation would be, without Champagne! As a matrimonial agent, Champagne’s achievements outdo those of the cleverest of manœuvring mammas. It was solely those two extra glasses at supper which emboldened young Impey Cue of the Foreign Office to summon up sufficient courage to propose in the conservatory to Miss Yellowboy, the great heiress; and Impey Cue now lords it at Yellowboy Park as though to the manor born. Nor must the part it plays on the eventful day when the fatal knot is firmly tied be overlooked. It has been cynically remarked that it is a painful spectacle even for the most hardened to witness the consigning of a victim to the doom matrimonial; and that it becomes all the more painful when, under the futile pretext of festivity, bewildered fathers, harassed mothers, sorrowing sisters, envious cousins, bored connections, and pitying friends, arrayed in their best attire, meet at an abnormally early hour round the miscalled social board. Still, fancy what a wedding breakfast would be without the accompaniment of Champagne!