"It will be best that I choose for you. There is already enough of Burgundy to trouble some toes to-morrow. Shall we say Bordeaux? Here are two of long descent, and one is a comet-wine—of a name long lost—and one is Laffitte, and both are in good order; neither is less than thirty years old. In this changeless atmosphere our great wines are long-lived. Have a care not to disturb the wines as we go up the stairs."
"We shall carry them with care," I replied, laughing, "until we have swallowed them."
"And then without care, I trust," cried the younger St. Maur. "Let us go; it is chilly here."
"A moment," said the Duke. "M. Michel will desire to know why all this costuming, and the bottles in mourning, and this ancient cellar."
"True," I returned. "I was about to ask."
"Well, well," said Des Illes. "A few words here, where they will have the more interest, and then let us mount, and end the tale with such memories as these good wines may suggest."
"This way," said the Duke to me. "Let me show you something." I followed him to the end of the cellar, where, to my surprise, I saw by the light of his lantern a door heavily built and guarded by a bar of wood. This he lifted, and as he opened the door, and we gazed into the deep darkness beyond, he said: "I show you a passageway into the catacombs of Paris, of which this cave must have been a part until built off to be made a cellar somewhere in the reign of Louis XV. And stay. Look at this"; and, turning aside, he showed me, as it lay on a cask, a cobwebbed bit of something.
"What is it?" I said.
"A woman's glove—and it has been here since 1794."
"The rest were better told in a less somber place," said St. Maur. "Let us go." Upon this we went up the stairs and out into the air. As we crossed through the barren shrubbery, each with his lantern and a little basket of wine, I thought that probably Paris could show no stranger sight than this sunken garden-space dark with box, the gentlemen in their dress of another time, and we two Yankees wondering what it all meant.