Quand j’y touche
Me parfume de nectar.’
[442] ] From the Extrait du Registre et Papiers des Assemblés du Peuple de la Ville d’Epernay, preserved in the MSS. of Bertin du Rocheret.
[443] ] Bertin du Rocheret’s MSS.
[444] ] Ibid.
[445] ] Mémoire concernant la Ville d’Epernay, by Maître François Stapart, notaire au bailliage, published in 1749.
[446] ] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.
[447] ] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in the Years 1787–8–9.
[448] ] Victor Fievet’s Histoire d’Epernay. In the list of expenses incurred on the passage of Louis XVI. and his family, four hundred livres are set down to ‘the Sieur Memmie Cousin, innkeeper and merchant at Epernay, for the dinner of the king, the queen, and the royal family, as well as for an indemnity for the furniture broken at the said Cousin’s.’
As regards the price of the wines of the River during the Revolutionary epoch, an old account-book of Messrs. Moët & Chandon shows that in 1797 the firm paid for the white wine of Epernay and Avize 200 francs, for that of Chouilly 180 francs, and for that of Pierry and Cramant 150 francs per pièce; whilst that of Ay cost from 565 to 600 francs the queue. Bottles in 1790 only cost 16 livres 10 sols the hundred.