strength. Of course, every sick courtier
drank the same beverage; those that were
not sick fell ill on purpose to follow their
dread sovereign's example. We may add, by
the way, that the failing powers of the same
monarch gave rise to the invention of
liqueurs by the same medical attendant, as a
cordial wherewith to stimulate the blunt
senses of decrepitude. The rock which forms
the base of this little chain is a very pure
subcarbonate of lime, with but little admixture
of foreign substances; in fact, it is true and
real marble streaked with a few delicate
pinkish veins. It is possible that, hereafter,
the marble of Nuits will stand in almost as
high repute as its wine.

One October morning I was awakened at
Nuits by the din of coopers hammering the tub
of preparation, and making them fit to receive
the grapes. I dressed myself to the sound of
music, whose rhythm corresponded to Dr.
Arne's old tune of, "When the hollow drum
doth beat to bed." The streets were full of
quiet but earnest business; it was the first
day of the vintage. There were carts going
out of town, on each of which was mounted a
large oval tub called a balonge, to receive and
partially squeeze the grapes in; there were
the same or similar carts and tubs brimful of
black grapes returning from the field; there
were men passing from the vineyards into the
town, laden with hods, or back-baskets, and
also with baskets shaped like Yarmouth
swills, only shallower, all full of the black,
not-at-all-goodlooking pineau grape;
women also with empty baskets containing
a supply of unshutting pruning-knives
to sever poor Jean Raisin from his
parent stem; gentlemen with choice little
baskets of grapes on their arm, culled before
the vintagers have begun, for their wives to
treasure in moss and paper to produce them
for the Christmas dessert; or a woman bearing
the same on her head, by way of
transporting them more steadily; and vine-
owners, accompanied by their bailiffs or
factotums, seriously walking to the scene of
action; for, they say here, when the cat's
away the rats will dance. Of course there
are parties of young ladies and gentlemen
who must go and see the vintaging, and
neighbours who like to peep at other
neighbours' crops. And then contrast with their
neat and spruce attire those three rough
fellows riding inside one balonge, like veritable
children of St. Nicholas in their pickled-pork
tub; pity, too, the horse who is forced to
drag the cart, laden with the balonge, filled
with as many as eight-and-twenty large
baskets of grapes—eight baskets make a
pièce, or hogshead of wine—a tolerable
load on a hot autumnal day. I should like
to give that horse a few bunches of grapes, to
moisten his poor dry dusty mouth with. By
the way, dogs are prohibited from entering
the vineyards when the fruit is ripe, for they
are as fond of a good dessert as the fox in
the fable; sportsmen also can be kept at bay
to the distance of three hundred metres, for,
gunshot wounds are fatal to Jean Raisin,
both in stem and fruit. If the owner's
longing for game, and not his judgment,
consents to or commits the trespass, it is he who
bears the penalty. Another by the way: a
miller's donkey stepped into a vineyard and
drank a full draught out of a tub of new
grape-juice. The owner summoned the
miller before the justice to make him pay
damages. The sentence was, that the donkey
having only swallowed a passing glass of
wine, without sitting down to enjoy himself
in a regular way, the miller was not
compelled to pay anything. That justice had
all the wisdom of Solomon. Thou shalt not
muzzle the ox while he treads out the corn.
It is odious to see French horses, at harvest
time, with baskets on their mouths like weanling
calves. But grapes—grapes—nothing
but grapes! All the grapes grown around
Nuits are brought into the town to be made
into wine, excepting always those numerous
basketfuls that are sold to be made into wine
elsewhere; a passable quantity, altogether,
although, they say, the grape-harvest is a
failure. You can smell the vintage as you
walk along the street—exactly the fruity,
cloying kind of smell which delighted the
old woman when she put her nose, with the
Æsopian exclamation, to the bung-hole of the
empty tub. Grapes, grape-refuse, grape-
produce, grape-odours, grape-tools, and grape-
people!

Nuits is a straggling, loose-built little town
(never having been confined within a corset of
fortifications), situated on one of the gorges
into which the Côte-d'Or is split, and
traversed by the bed of what is sometimes
a torrent, and sometimes a dry strip of shingle
and sand, over which then unnecessary bridges
stride. Nuits, with only five thousand
inhabitants, still possesses two public walks;
but the vineyards were the most tempting
promenade to me. Everybody at Nuits is
either a vine-grower, a wine-merchant, a
vintager, or a wine-cooper. The universal
population are drinkers of wine, from old sealed
bottles to new piquette, and the shop-windows
display a varied assortment of brass and other
taps and syphons. As you walk in the
outskirts, little symptoms tell eloquent tales
about the climate. You have maize cultivated
with a successful result, sometimes in patches,
sometimes in single plants stuck in to fill the
place of a missing vine; you have magnificent
heads of drooping millet; you have melons
ripening on the bare open ground; you have
cornichons or gherkins, growing in a row and
running up sticks like ranks of green peas.
A gardener will tell you what all that means,
if the flavour of your glass of wine does not
give rise to strong suspicions that the summer
here differs a little from the English one.
Quite out of town, you are in a sea of vines.
In general there is no boundary or fence.