bottle of Hock in the cool, marble-paved
hall.

Seated in rocking-chairs, softly cushioned,
Pedro places before us two long, green bottles
of the Rhineland wine, some Tolosas (or
sugar-cakes), and some fragrant Havannahs.
"But," says Don Sanchez, diving into a side-
pocket of his white linen jacket, "you must
first try one of the cigars from my own
petaca (cigar-case made of coloured aloe
thread). You know the prime of our Cadiz
youth go as merchants to Havannah, which is
Spain's Hesperides. We, as old school-fellows,
keep up correspondence, and now and then
exchange the best Spanish wine for the best
Havannah cigars. Spare no expense, I say,
but send me over the very best. Here they
are."

"Their age?"

"They do no good after one year. Then
a cigar is in its prime. The sea-voyage
mellows them as it does our sherry. They
are expensive. Even at first price, and without
any profit going to my friends, they cost
me fourpence each. Judge what your London
cigars must be."

"How many cigars does a tobacco debauchee
smoke per day?"

"At the most a dozen. This is my seventh.
This is the second time this has been lit. I
see, you stare;—you English throw away a
cigar after a few puffs, like the Dutch epicure,
who said that, after two glasses, the bloom
was off the bottle, and called for another.
A Spanish smoker thinks, on the contrary,
what you call rancidness is flavour, and likes a
re-lit cigar. Shall I roll you a cigarette just
as he does? remember the pecho, or last burning
puff of a cigarette when the bit of paper
all but scorches your lip."

"Do ladies smoke here?"

"No, it is thought a vice, like drinking, for
women; and the few who do it, do it by
stealth. Try a cheroot?"

I took one.

"Excuse me—be a Spaniard for once. Never
light a cheroot at the large end, but at the
small; do not hold it between your teeth,
but between your lips. To epicures these
small things are important."

Our episodical discourse then fell upon
cigarettes. The Don assured me that paper
cigars were introduced partly from their
cheapness, partly for their cleanliness and
their suitability for smoking at odd moments
when there was no time for a cigar—at
church-doors, for instance; before going into
mass; in the market over a bargain; at lunch
over a "nip" of aguardiente flavoured with
aniseed; or between the acts of a sword-and-
cloak comedy.

Then we drove back to the old highroad,
and got again on wines. Did I remember
the glass from the Saint Barbara cask, just
after the brown-gold one in the Saint
Antonio? That was real Amontillado. What
was Amontillado? Where did it grow?
Bless me! why, nowhere. It was an
accidental quality discovered by tasting. It
had an almondy, dry, bitter flavour, which
rendered it of rare value to mix, because
I must clearly understand (and it was
only fair to tell me) that English sherry was
a chemical compound, made, like a French
side-dish, of many ingredients, and of various
ages and qualities of wines.

In Xeres there were five hundred thousand
arrobas of wine—thirty of which went to a
bota (butt)—made annually. This made
thirty-four thousand butts, nine thousand of
which were of first quality. Sherry is too
strong and too dear for Spaniards, and too
feverish for the climate. The best is, in Xeres,
a dollar a bottle. The best in the bodega is
worth from fifty to eighty guineas a butt; and,
after insurance, freight, and sale charges, it
stands the importer in from one hundred
to one hundred and thirty guineas, before it
reaches his cellar (say) in Belgrave Square.

"How many gallons to the butt, Don
Sanchez?"

"About one hundred and twelve. This
will bottle into about fifty-two dozen, and
the duty is five shillings and sixpence the
gallon. So you may form your own opinion
about cheap London sherries, which are,
generally very 'curious ' indeed—mere
doctors' draughts, in fact, made up according
to certain swindling prescriptions."

Here was a blow for my old friend Binns,
who opens a bottle of forty-eight shilling
sherry with the air of an antiquarian
unswathing a mummy Pharaoh. Thought
I, the next time the deluded man points to
the oily stickiness of his glass, I will leap up,
seize him, and say in a hollow voice:

"Binns, you are the victim of a life-long
delusion; that stuff you drink, you think is
the juice of Spanish grapes, plucked by men
playing guitars, and smoking cigars; you
call it, in poetical moments, bottled sunlight,
sunfire, and so on—bah! (after the manner
of Napoleon) it is only a chemical
compound made up of drugs and infusions like
Daffy's elixir or James's powder. It is
cooked up with boiled, treacly wine and
brandy. It is a compound mixed from a
dozen barrels, and made to order for a
particular market. If the vines of Xeres grew
till they got black in the face, Binns, they
could not yield wine like your forty-eight
shilling sherry."

The Don laughed, and said that certainly
the sherry wine district was very small; not
more than twelve miles square. Therefore,
it could not yield honest wine enough even
for half London. The sherry grape grew
only on certain low, chalky hills where, the
earth being light-coloured, is not so much
burnt—did not chap and split so much by
the sun, as darker and heavier soils do. A
mile beyond these hills, the grapes deteriorate.
The older the plants the better; but the
fewer the grapes.