"A pity," exclaimed the younger St. Maur, "that our friends' modern dress should interpolate a note of to-day."
"We can only regret," said I.
"It is but a wicked little remark, that," returned the Duke. "My son is of to-day, Monsieur. For him this is a masquerade, interesting, droll. But for us, mon Dieu! It is——."
"Yes, it is," returned Des Illes gravely.
"Pardon, Duke," said the son, smiling. "Once all these things lived for you and for our friend; but as to me—I have only the memory of another's memory."
"Neatly put!" cried Des Illes. "Almost a mot; as near as men get to it in these degenerate days. Well, well, if wit be dead, wine is not. Let us go now among the old memories of which your son speaks. Come, gentlemen."
With these words we went with him through a back room, and thence by a window into a garden. In the uncertain moonlight I saw that it was large, with great walls about it, and the appearance beyond these of tall, leafless trees. We passed a frozen basin and the figure of a dryad, and went after our host into a house for plants, now to appearance disused. At a far corner he lifted a trap-door and went before us down a stone stair to a wine-cellar such as is common in good French houses. Here were bottles and barrels of vin ordinaire for common use. I began to feel an increase of interest when, near the far end of this cellar, M. Des Illes set down his lantern, unlocked a padlock, and, aided by St. Maur, lifted a larger trap-door. With a word of care as to the steps, he showed us the way down a broad stone stairway, and in a minute we were all standing on the rock floor of a great room underground.
As we saw the Duke and his companions hang their lanterns on hooks set in the wall, we did as they had done, and, placing our wine-baskets on casks, began to get used to the cross lights of the lanterns and to look around us. The space seemed to be some thirty feet long and perhaps as much as fifteen feet wide. It was cut out of the soft lime-rock which underlies Paris. Perhaps a dozen casks of wine, on racks, were set along one side of the cave, and over them, on stone shelves excavated in the walls, were hundreds of bottles.
"Be careful of the cobwebs," said Des Illes, and there was need to be. They hung from above in black curtains and in coarse openwork of tangled ropes. They lay over the bottles and across the casks, wonderful for amount and for their dark hue. The spinners of this funereal broidery I could nowhere see. It was the work of generations of arachnidean artists long dead; or else those who lived were hiding, scared, amidst these great pendent festoons. I wondered how the net-makers had lived, for flies there were none, and no other insect life so far as I could see. After this brief survey I observed that the air was cool, and so dry that it was hardly felt to be uncomfortable. The three gentlemen were moving to and fro, exchanging phrases apparently about the wine, and as I joined their little group it became clear that a selection was being made.
"There will be one bottle of the year," said the Duke.