in his cellar; that is his plant, his mill, his
factory. The Burgundian's consists in his
vineyard. There is but one côte d'or, and
human skill cannot create another; there
are scores of architects and thousands of
masons in Great Britain and Ireland, and
money moreover to pay them with, who
would outdo with ease the vastest
storehouses of Châlons, Epernay, Sillery, or
Reims.

Notwithstanding which, the above-mentioned
cellars really are a sight to see.
M. Jacquesson's, the most modern, dates
from eighteen hundred, and is considered
by sticklers for the old routine to be rashly
light and airy in its construction. In fact,
there is little that is cellarlike about it. No
damp, no fungus, no mouldy smell, and
almost no darkness. For an ordinary visit
you have no need to be lighted about with a
candle. Champagne cellars are made to
contain wine in bottles, not in casks; hence
an immense difference in their aspect and
atmosphere. Jacquesson's establishment
crowns the top of a hill, just outside the
town, near the railway station. It is white
and clean, shining with neatness and good
repair; and a plain square tower, at one
corner of the range of buildings, is sufficiently
ornamental and solid in its proportions to
show that the owner is no common tradesman.
A like hint is given by the pheasantry
at the other end—a handsome enclosure
of shrubs and evergreens all covered in with
a vast roof of netting. The courtyard, too,
of M. Jacquesson's residence in the town
displays an assemblage of orange-trees (of
course in tubs) that would do no discredit to
a royal garden. Champagne wine is clearly
lucrative. Heavy taxes are cheerfully paid
when part of the money is to be returned
in pleasure.

The cellars are hardly underground; that
is, though pierced in the side of the hill,
they are nearly level with the adjoining
road. Here in cool grot, in one of the
galleries, is a private tramway communicating
with the Châlons station close by, and all for
the convenient conveyance away, by trucksfull,
of armies of well-drilled and disciplined
champagne, not to mention receiving the raw
recruits or empty bottles that have to be
brought in, and dispatching to their fiery
funeral in the glass-house the shattered
corpses or broken bottles that must be
carried out. The last-mentioned sufferers
form a heavy item. Outside, at various
distances, you observe a series of small glass
domes. Within, you find they light the
cellars most effectually. The rays, descending
perpendicularly from the sky, are caught
on large sheets of polished tin, inclining at
an angle of forty-five degrees, and are thence
reflected horizontally throughout the whole
length of the galleries which they respectively
command. At a distance, the reflection
is so powerful and brilliant, that you might
fancy the place was splendidly furnished
with a set of superb plate-glass mirrors. On
each side of these long straight galleries,
which cross each other at right angles, are
ranged the bottles in frames of wood, called
tabletas, mostly containing a hundred and
eight bottles each. At various points the
temperature of the cellar can be regulated
by folding doors which exclude the external
air at pleasure. The place in the cellar
which the bottles occupy, and the position in
which they are laid in the rack, depends
upon their age and the point to which their
education has advanced. Much more than
this, to see, there is not; except perhaps
the wine-press and the packing-room.

Epernay lies in a lonely valley. The view
thence consists of vine-clad hills, the less
productive summits of which form a purple
background on the opposite side. But if
you walk past those self-same vineyards, you
will see a broad Champenois hint not to touch
anything which does not belong to you, in
the streaks of whitewash that are dabbed on
grapes growing dangerously close to the
public path. The town is a small compact
little place, whose chief ornament consists in
the princely mansions in which the
wine-merchants have contrived to house
themselves. I could not but look at them and
marvel at the results obtained from a little
frisky wine. For though by no means castles
in the air, we may assert that they are built
with carbonic-acid gas, cemented with sugar,
and founded on froth. The numerous
fabriques and magasins of bouchons
d'Espagne, or shops of cutters of Spanish corks,
may be looked upon as the arsenals of balls
and bullets that are to be fired off by the
produce of Jean Raisin's own powder-mill. But
Jean, I believe, mostly shoots with an air-gun.

M. Moët, on presentation of a recommendatory
letter, at once acceded to my request,
not only to travel through his unseen
dominions, but also to watch his confidants at
work; and in less than five minutes, I was
tripping downstairs, candlestick in hand, as if
it were bedtime. The plan of this great
alembic of cosmopolitan luxury is exceedingly
simple, and is easily carried away in
the head. Here, no daylight streams in from
above, nor too much air. On descending to
the first grand level, you are conducted
through a series of straight, dark-brown,
dampish galleries, which cross each other
right and left, and whose general plan is a
short parallelogram or inexact square. Without
the picturesque festoons and tapestry of
funguses which decorate the London Docks,
there is yet enough of long-standing mouldiness
to give M. Moët's caves an unmistakably
respectable and ancestral character.
And for vastness, run as quick as you will, it
would take more than three good hours to
traverse them completely. From four to five
millions of bottles are their contents; therefore
on you go, and on and on, with regiments