Chapter IV: Part I: I (3)

The success of Dom Perignon's wine caused a revolution in the wine-production of the province, and gave rise to numerous imitations, despite the outcry raised against sparkling wine by many _gourmets_, and even by the wine-merchants themselves, who complained that they had to pander to what they regarded as a depraved taste. The elder Bertin du Rocheret, father of the _lieutenant criminel_ and a notable dealer in wine, was much opposed to it.[125] Marshal de Montesquiou d'Artagnan, the gallant assailant of Denain, had ordered some wine of him, and he writes in reply, on November 11, 1711: 'I have chosen three poinçons of the best wine of Pierry at 400 francs the queue, not to be drawn off as _mousseux_--that would be too great a pity. Also a poinçon to be drawn off as _mousseux_ at 250 francs the queue; or, if you will only go as far as 180 francs, it will froth just as well, or better. Also a poinçon of _tocane_ of Ay to be drunk this winter--that is to say, it should be drunk by Shrovetide--at 300 francs the queue: this wine is very fine.'[126]

On the 27th December 1712 the Marshal writes: 'With regard to my wine being made _mousseux_, many prefer that it should be so; and I should not be vexed, provided it does not in any way depreciate its quality.' On the 18th October of the following year the stern _laudator temporis acti_ describes how the bottling has been carried out, 'in order that your wines might be _mousseux_, without which I should not have done it, and perhaps you would have found it better, but it would not have had the merit of being _mousseux_, which in my opinion is the merit of a poor wine, and only proper to beer, chocolate, and whipped cream. Good Champagne should be clear and fine, should sparkle in the glass, and should flatter the palate, as it never does when it is _mousseux_, but has a smack of fermentation; hence it is only _mousseux_ because it is working.'

The converted Marshal replies on October 25th: 'I was in the wrong to ask you to bottle my wine so that it might be _mousseux_; it is a fashion that prevails everywhere, especially amongst young people. For my own part, I care very little about it; but I wish the wine to be clear and fine, and to have a strong Champagne bouquet.' In the following December Bertin, in answer to the Marshal's request for three quartaux of wine, says: 'Will you kindly let me know at what date you propose to drink this wine? If it is to be drunk as _mousseux_, I shall not agree with you.'

The allusion to the time of year at which the wine was to be drunk throws a light upon a practice of the day, confirmed by other passages in this correspondence. Much of the wine made was drunk as _vin bourru_ fined, but not racked off, at the beginning of the year, or as _tocane_, which was apt to go off if kept beyond Shrovetide. This speedy consumption and the careful choice made of the grapes intended for _vin mousseux_ militated against the formation in the bottles of that deposit, which, up to the commencement of the present century, when the system of _dégorgeage_ was introduced, could only be remedied by _dépotage_,[127] though, as we have seen, the Abbey of Hautvillers had a secret method, carefully guarded, of checking its formation.[128]

It is singular that the presence of a natural _liqueur_--the consequence of a complete but not excessive ripeness of the grape, and at present considered one of the highest qualities of the wine--was, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, regarded as a disease. The _Mémoire_ of 1718 states that when the wine has any liqueur, however good it may otherwise be, it is not esteemed, and recommends the owner to get rid of this 'bad quality' forthwith by putting a pint of new milk warm from the cow into each _pièce_, stirring it well, letting it rest three days, and then racking the wine off. At this epoch the wine of the Champagne seems to have been preferred perfectly dry.[129] In June 1716 the Marshal d'Artagnan reproached Bertin du Rocheret for sending him Hautvillers wine of the preceding vintage which had turned out _liquoreuse_. However, in August he felt forced to write that it had become excellent, and similar experiences seem to have soon removed all prejudices against this liqueur character. Bertin, in 1725, speaks of it as one of the qualities of wine, and charges for it in proportion; and six years later remarks that the English are as mad for liqueur and colour in their wines as the French.[130]

IV.

/The Battle of the Wines./

Temporary check to the popularity of Sparkling Champagne--Doctors
disagree--The champions of Champagne and Burgundy--Péna and his
patient--A young Burgundian student attacks the Wine of Reims--The
Faculty of Reims in arms--A local Old Parr cited as an example
in favour of the Wines of the Champagne--Salins of Beaune and
Le Pescheur of Reims engage warmly in the dispute--A pelting
with pamphlets--Burgundy sounds a war-note--The Sapphics of
Benigné Grenan--An asp beneath the flowers--The gauntlet picked
up--Carols from a Coffin--Champagne extolled as superior to all
other wines--It inspires the heart and stirs the brain--The
apotheosis of Champagne foam--Burgundy, an invalid, seeks a
prescription--Impartially appreciative drinkers of both wines--Bold
Burgundian and stout Rémois, each a jolly tippling fellow--Canon
Maucroix's parallel between Burgundy and Demosthenes and Champagne
and Cicero--Champagne a panacea for gout and stone--Final decision
in favour of Champagne by the medical faculty of Paris--Pluche's
opinion on the controversy--Champagne a lively wit and Burgundy a
solid understanding--Champagne commands double the price of the
best Burgundy--Zealots reconciled at table.

By a strange fatality the popularity of the sparkling wine of the Champagne, which had helped to dissipate the gloom hanging over court and capital during the last twenty years of the reign of Louis Quatorze,[131] began to wane the year preceding that monarch's death.[132] Dom Perignon too, as though stricken to the heart by this, forthwith drooped and died. The inhabitants of the province once more turned their attention to their red wines, which continued to enjoy a high reputation during the first half of the century,[133] despite the sweeping assertion that they were somewhat dry, rather flat, and possessed a strong flinty flavour,[134] the _goût de terroir_ alluded to by St. Evremond.

These red wines were not only sent to Paris in large quantities by way of the Marne,[135] but commanded an important export trade, those of the Mountain, which were better able to bear the journey than the growths of the River, gracing the best-appointed tables of London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and the North,[136] and especially of Flanders, where they were usually sold as Burgundy.[137] It must not be lost sight of that the yield of white sparkling wine from the _crûs d'élite_ was for a long time comparatively small, especially when contrasted with that of to-day.[138] At a later period the manufacture of _vin mousseux_ increased, notably in the districts south of the Marne,[139] and drove out almost entirely the still red wine; the place of the latter being supplied, as regards Holland, Belgium, and Northern France, by the growths of Bordeaux, which were found to keep better in damp climates.[140]

One cause of this falling off in the popularity of the sparkling wine arose from the great battle which raged for many years respecting the relative merits of Champagne and Burgundy. It was waged in the schools, and not in the field; for the combatants were neither dashing soldiers, brilliant courtiers, nor even gay young students, but potent, grave, and reverend physicians--the wigged, capped, and gowned pedants of the Diaphorus type whom Molière so piteously pilloried. The only blood shed was that of the grape, excepting when some enthusiastic Sangrado was impelled by a too conscientious practical examination into the qualities of the vintage he championed to a more than ordinary reckless use of the lancet. The contending armies couched pens instead of lances, and marshalled arguments in array in place of squadrons. They hurled pamphlets and theses at each others' heads in lieu of bombshells, and kept up withal a running fire of versification, so that the rumble of hexameters replaced that of artillery.

National pride, and perhaps a smack of envy at the growing popularity of the still red wines of the Champagne, had, as far back as 1652, led a hot-headed young Burgundian, one Daniel Arbinet, to select as the subject of a thesis, maintained by him before the schools of Paris, the proposition that the wine of Beaune was more delicious and more wholesome than any other wine,[141] the remaining vintages of the universe being pretty roughly handled in the thesis in question. The Champenois contented themselves for the time being with cultivating their vineyards and improving their wines, till in 1677, when these latter had acquired yet more renown, M. de Révélois of Reims boldly rushed into print with the assertion that the wine of Reims was the most wholesome of all.[142] Though the first to write in its favour, he was not the first doctor of eminence who had expressed an opinion favourable to the wine of Champagne. Péna, a leading Parisian physician of the seventeenth century, was once consulted by a stranger. 'Where do you come from?' he inquired. 'I am a native of Saumur.' 'A native of Saumur. What bread do you eat?' 'Bread from the Belle Cave.' 'A native of Saumur, and you eat bread from the Belle Cave. What meat do you get?' 'Mutton fed at Chardonnet.' 'A native of Saumur, eating bread from the Belle Cave and mutton fed at Chardonnet. What wine do you drink?' 'Wine from the Côteaux.'[143] 'What! You are a native of Saumur; you eat bread from the Belle Cave, and mutton fed at Chardonnet, and drink the wine of the Côteaux, and you come here to consult me! Go along; there can be nothing the matter with you!'[144]

Burgundy remained silent in turn for nearly twenty years, when, lo, in 1696--probably just about the time when the popping of Dom Perignon's corks began to make some noise in the world--a yet more opinionated young champion of the Côte d'Or, Mathieu Fournier, a medical student, hard pressed for the subject of his inaugural thesis, and in the firm faith that

'None but a clever dialectician
Can hope to become a good physician,
And that logic plays an important part
In the mystery of the healing art,'

propounded the theory that the wines of Reims irritated the nerves, and caused a predisposition to catarrh, gout, and other disorders, owing to which Fagon, the King's physician, had forbidden them to his royal master.[145]

(From a portrait of the time).]

Shocked at these scandalous assertions, the entire Faculty of Medicine at the Reims University rose in arms in defence of their native vintage. Its periwigged professors put their learned heads together to discuss the all-important question, 'Is the wine of Reims more agreeable and more wholesome than the wine of Burgundy?' and in 1700 Giles Culotteau embodied their combined opinions in a pamphlet published under that title.[146] After extolling the liquid purity, the excellent brightness, the divine flavour, the paradisiacal perfume, and the great durability of the wines of Ay, Pierry, Verzy, Sillery, Hautvillers, &c., as superior to those of any growth of Burgundy, he instanced the case of a local Old Parr named Pierre Pieton, a _vigneron_ of Hautvillers, who had married at the age of 110, and reached that of 118 without infirmity, as a convincing proof of the material advantages reaped from their consumption.

Salins, the _doyen_ of the Faculty of Medicine of Beaune, was intrusted with the task of replying, and in 1704 bitterly assailed Culotteau's thesis in a 'Defence of the Wine of Burgundy against the Wine of Champagne,' which ran to five editions in four years. M. le Pescheur, a doctor of Reims, vigorously attacked each of these editions in succession, maintaining amongst other things that the wine of Reims owed its renown to the many virtues discovered in it by the great lords who had accompanied Louis XIV. to his coronation; and that if the King, on the advice of his doctors, had renounced its use, his courtiers had certainly not. He also asserted that England, Germany, and the North of Europe consumed far more Champagne than they did Burgundy, and that it would be transported without risk to the end of the world, Tavernier having taken it to Persia, and another traveller to Siam and Surinam.

The partisanship quickly spread throughout the country, and the respective admirers of Burgundy and Champagne pitilessly pelted each other in prose and verse; for the two camps had their troubadours, who, like those of old, excited the courage and ardour of the combatants. The first to sound the warlike trumpet was Benigné Grenan, professor at the college of Harcourt, who, with the rich vintage of his native province bubbling at fever-heat through his veins, sought in 1711 to crush Champagne by means of Latin sapphics, a sample of which has been thus translated:

'Lift to the skies thy foaming wine,
That cheers the heart, that charms the eye;
Exalt its fragrance, gift divine,
Champagne, from thee the wise must fly!

A poison lurks those charms below,
An asp beneath the flowers is hid;
In vain thy sparkling fountains flow
When wisdom has their lymph forbid.

'Tis, but when cloyed with purer fair
We can with such a traitress flirt;
So following Beaune with reverent air,
Let Reims appear but at dessert.'[147]

The gauntlet thus contemptuously thrown down was promptly and indignantly picked up by the Rector of the University of Beauvais, the learned Dr. Charles Coffin, a native of Buzancy, near Reims, who in the quiet retirement of the Picardian _Alma Mater_ had evidently not forgotten to keep up his acquaintance with the vintage of his native province. The Latin poem he produced in reply, under the title of _Campania vindicata_,[148] had nothing in common with his lugubriously sepulchral name, as may be seen by the following somewhat freely translated extracts from it. After invoking the aid of a bottle of the enlivening liquor whose praises he is about to sing, he exclaims:

'As the vine, although lowly in aspect, outshines
The stateliest trees by the produce it bears,
So midst all earth's list of rich generous wines,
Our Reims the bright crown of preëminence wears.

The Massica, erst sang by Horace of old,
To Sillery now must abandon the field;
Falernian, nor Chian, could ne'er be so bold
To rival the nectar Ay's sunny slopes yield.

As bright as the goblet it sparklingly fills
With diamonds in fusion, it foaming exhales
An odour ambrosial, the nostril that thrills,
Foretelling the flavour delicious it veils.

At first with false fury the foam-bells arise,
And creamily bubbling spread over the brim,
Till equally swiftly their petulance dies
In a purity that makes e'en crystal seem dim.'[149]

Praising the flavour of this nectar, which he declares is in every way worthy of its appearance, he stoutly defends the wine from the charge of unwholesomeness adduced against it by Grenan:

'Despite the tongue of malice,
No poison in thy chalice
Was ever found, Champagne!
Simplicity most loyal
Was e'er thy boast right royal,
And this thy wines retain.
No harm lurks in the fire
That helps thee to inspire
The heart and spur the brain.'[150]

So far from causing inconvenience, he claims for Champagne the property of keeping off both gout and gravel, neither of which, he says, is known in Reims and its neighbourhood, and continues:

'When on the fruit-piled board,
Thy cups, with nectar stored,
Commence their genial reign,
The wisest, sternest faces
Of mirth display the traces,
And to rejoice are fain.
As laughter's silv'ry ripple
Greets every glass we tipple.
Away fly grief and pain.'[151]

The jovial old rector with the sepulchral appellation then proceeds, according to the most approved method of warfare, to carry the campaign into the enemy's territory. He admits the nutritive and strengthening properties of Burgundy, but demands what it possesses beyond these, which are shared in common with it by many other vintages. He then prophesies, with the return of peace,[152] the advent of the English to buy the wine of Reims; and concludes by wishing that all who dispute the merits of Champagne may find nothing to drink but the sour cider of Normandy or the acrid vintage of Ivri. The citizens of Reims, thoroughly alive to the importance of the controversy, were enchanted with this production; they did not, however, crown the poet with laurel, but more wisely and appropriately despatched to him four dozen of their best red and gray wines, by the aid of which he continued to tipple and to sing.

Grenan, resuming the offensive in turn, at once addressed an epistle in Latin verse, in favour of Burgundy against Champagne, to Fagon, the King's physician.[153] Complaining that the latter wine lays claim unjustly to the first rank, he allows it certain qualities--brilliancy, purity, limpidity, a subtle savour that touches the most blunted palate, and an aroma so delicious that it is impossible to resist its attractions. But he objects to its pretensions.

'Its vinous flood, with swelling pride
In foaming wavelets welling up,
Pours forth its bright and sparkling tide,
Bubbling and glittering in the cup.'[154]

He goes on to accuse the Champenois poet of being unduly inspired by this wine, the effects of which he finds apparent in his inflated style and his attempts to place Champagne in the first rank, and make all other vintages its subjects; and he reiterates his allegations that, unlike Burgundy, it affects both the head and the stomach, and is bound to produce gout and gravel in its systematic imbibers. He concludes by begging Fagon to pronounce in his favour, as having proved the virtues of Burgundy on the King himself, whose strength had been sustained by it. The retort was sharp and to the point, taking the form of a twofold epigram from an anonymous hand:

'To the doctor to go
On behalf of your wine
Is, as far as I know,
Of its sickness a sign.

Your cause and your wine
Must be equally weak,
Since to check their decline
A prescription you seek.'[155]

Nor was the poet of the funereal cognomen backward in stepping into the field; for he published a metrical decree, supposed to be issued by the faculty of the island of Cos in the fourth year of the ninety-first Olympiad,[156] in which, though a verdict is nominally given in favour of Burgundy, Grenan's pleas on behalf of this wine are treated with withering sarcasm.

But whilst these enthusiastic partisans thus belaboured one another, there were not wanting impartial spirits who could recognise that there were merits on both sides. Bellechaume, in an ode jointly addressed to the two combatants,[157] adjures them to live at peace on Parnassus, and, remembering that Horace praised both Falernian and Massica, to jointly animate their muse with Champagne and Burgundy:

'To learn the difference between
The wine of Reims and that of Beaune,
The fairest plan would be, I ween,
To drink them both, not one alone.'[158]

Another equally judicious versifier called also on the Burgundian champion[159] to cease the futile contest, since

'Bold Burgundian ever glories
With stout Remois to get mellow;
Each well filled with vinous lore is
Each a jolly tippling fellow.'[160]

And the learned Canon Maucroix of Reims exhibited a similar conciliatory spirit in the ingenious parallel which he drew between the two greatest orators of antiquity and the wines of the Marne and the Côte d'Or. 'In the wine of Burgundy,' he observes, 'there is more strength and vigour; it does not play with its man so much, it overthrows him more suddenly,--that is Demosthenes. The wine of Champagne is subtler and more delicate; it amuses more and for a longer time, but in the end it does not produce less effect,--that is Cicero.'[161]

The national disasters which marked the close of the reign of Louis XIV. diverted public attention in some degree from the nugatory contest;[162] and though Fontenelle sought to prove that a glass of Champagne was better than a bottle of Burgundy,[163] the impartially appreciative agreed with Panard that

'Old Burgundy and young Champagne
At table boast an equal reign.'[164]

But the doctors continued to disagree, and new generations of them still went on wrangling over the vexed questions of supremacy and salubrity. In 1739 Jean François carried the war into the enemy's camp by maintaining at Paris that Burgundy caused gout; and a little later Robert Linguet declared the wine of Reims to be as healthy as it was agreeable. In 1777 Xavier, Regent of the Faculty of Medicine at the Reims University, affirmed that not only did the once vilified _vin mousseux_ share with the other wines of the Champagne the absence of the tartarous particles which in many red wines are productive of gout and gravel, but that the gas it contained caused it to act as a dissolvent upon stone in the human body, and was also invaluable, from its antiseptic qualities, in treating putrid fevers.[165] Further, the appropriately named Champagne Dufresnay established, to his own satisfaction and that of his colleagues, that the wine was superior to any other growth, native or foreign.[166] At length, in 1778, when the bones of the original disputants were dust, and their lancets rust, on the occasion of a thesis being defended before the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, a verdict was formally pronounced by this body in favour of the wine of the Champagne.[167]

V.

/Progress and Popularity of Sparkling Champagne./

Sparkling Champagne intoxicates the Regent d'Orléans and the
_roués_ of the Palais Royal--It is drunk by Peter the Great at
Reims--A horse trained on Champagne and biscuits--Decree of Louis
XV. regarding the transport of Champagne--Wine for the _petits
cabinets du Roi_--The _petits soupers_ and Champagne orgies of
the royal household--A bibulous royal mistress--The Well-Beloved
at Reims--Frederick the Great, George II., Stanislas Leczinski,
and Marshal Saxe all drink Champagne--Voltaire sings the praises
of the effervescing wine of Ay--The Commander Descartes and
Lebatteux extol the charms of sparkling Champagne--Bertin
du Rocheret and his balsamic molecules--The Bacchanalian
poet Panard chants the inspiring effects of the vintages of
the Marne--Marmontel is jointly inspired by Mademoiselle de
Navarre and the wine of Avenay--The Abbé de l'Attaignant and
his fair hostesses--Breakages of bottles in the manufacturers'
cellars--Attempts to obviate them--The early sparkling wines
merely _crémant_--_Saute bouchon_ and _demi-mousseux_--Prices
of Champagne in the eighteenth century--Preference given to
light acid wines for sparkling Champagne--Lingering relics
of prejudice against _vin mousseux_--The secret addition of
sugar--Originally the wine not cleared in bottle--Its transfer
to other bottles necessary--Adoption of the present method
of ridding the wine of its deposit--The vine-cultivators the
last to profit by the popularity of sparkling Champagne--Marie
Antoinette welcomed to Reims--Reception and coronation of Louis
XVI. at Reims--'The crown, it hurts me!'--Oppressive dues and
tithes of the _ancien régime_--The Fermiers Généraux and their
hôtel at Reims--Champagne under the Revolution--Napoleon at
Epernay--Champagne included in the equipment of his satraps--The
Allies in the Champagne--Drunkenness and pillaging--Appreciation
of Champagne by the invading troops--The beneficial results which
followed--Universal popularity of Champagne--The wine a favourite
with kings and potentates--Its traces to be met with everywhere.

Whilst doctors went on shaking their periwigged heads, and debating whether sparkling Champagne did or did not injure the nerves and produce gout, the timid might hearken to their counsels, but there were plenty of spirits bold enough to let the corks pop gaily, regardless of all consequences. The wine continued in high favour with the _viveurs_ of the capital, and especially with the brilliant band of titled scoundrels who formed the Court of Philippe le Débonnaire. 'When my son gets drunk,' wrote, on the 13th August 1716, the Princess Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, the Regent's mother, 'it is not with strong drinks or spirituous liquors, but pure wine of Champagne;'[168] and as the pupil of the Abbé Dubois very seldom went to bed sober,[169] he must have consumed a fair amount of the fluid in question in the course of his career. Even his boon companion, the Duke de Richelieu, is forced to admit that there was a great deal more drunkenness about him than was becoming in a Regent of France; and that, as he could not support wine so well as his guests, he often rose from the table drunk, or with his wits wool-gathering. 'Two bottles of Champagne,' remarks the duke in his _Chronique_, 'had this effect upon him.'

Desirous, seemingly, that such enjoyments should not be confined to himself alone, he abolished in 1719 sundry dues on wine in general, whilst his famous, or rather infamous, suppers conduced to the vogue of that sparkling Champagne which was an indispensable accompaniment of those _décolleté_ repasts. It unloosed the tongues and waistcoats of the _roués_ of the Palais Royal, the Nocés, Broglios, Birons, Brancas, and Canillacs; it lent an additional sparkle to the bright eyes of Mesdames de Parabère and de Sabran, and inspired the scathing remark from the lips of one of those fair frail ones, that 'God, after having made man, took up a little mud, and used it to form the souls of princes and lackeys.' It played its part, too, at the memorable repast at which the Regent and his favourite daughter so scandalised their hostess, the Duchess of Burgundy, and at the fatal orgie shared by the same pair on the terrace of Meudon.

The example set in such high quarters could not fail to be followed. Champagne fired the sallies of the wits and versifiers whom the Duchess of Maine gathered around her at Sceaux, and stimulated the madness which seized upon the whole of Paris at the bidding of the financier Law. It frothed, too, in the goblets which Bertin du Rocheret had the honour of filling with his own hand for Peter the Great, on the passage of the Northern Colossus through Reims in June 1717; and its consumption was increased by a decree of 1728, which especially provided that people proceeding to their country seats might take with them for their own use a certain quantity of this wine free of duty.

A curious purpose to which the wine was applied appeared from a wager laid by the Count de Saillans--one of the most famous horsemen of his day, and already distinguished by similar feats--to the effect that he would ride a single horse from the gate of Versailles to the Hôtel des Invalides within an hour. His wife, fearing the dangerous descent from Sèvres towards Paris, prevailed on the King to prohibit him from riding in person; but a valet, whose neck was of course of no moment, was allowed to act as his deputy in essaying the feat. The horse selected was carefully fed for some days beforehand on biscuits and Champagne. Crowds assembled to witness the attempt, which was made on May 9, 1725, and resulted in the valet's coming in two and a half minutes behind time. Whether this was due to the badness of the roads, as was alleged, or to the singular _régime_ adopted for the animal selected, remains a moot question.[170]

Champagne won equal favour in the eyes of Louis XV., as in those of the curious compound of embodied vices who had watched over the welfare of the kingdom during his minority, though it is true that at a comparatively early age--in the year 1731--he had, on representations that over-production of wine was lowering its value, prohibited the planting of fresh vineyards without his permission under a penalty of 3000 francs, and had renewed this prohibition the year following.[171]

(From a picture of the epoch).]

(From the 'Routes de France').]

The royal repasts at La Muette, Marly, and Choissy were, however, enlivened with wine from the Champagne; for we find Bertin du Rocheret in 1738 despatching thirty pieces of the still wine to M. de Castagnet for the _petits cabinets du Roi_,[172] and the eldest of the fair sisters La Nesle, Madame de Mailly, the 'Queen of Choissy' and _maîtresse en titre_, in 1740 reforming the cellar management, and suppressing the _petits soupers_ and Champagne orgies of the royal household.[173] Her conduct in this respect seems, however, not to have been dictated by motives of virtue, but rather by the conviction that the wine was too precious to be consumed by inferiors. We are assured that the countess loved wine, and above all that of Champagne, and that she could hold her own against the stoutest toper. 'She has been reproached with having imparted this taste to the King, but it is probable that his Majesty was naturally inclined that way.'[174]

(From the collection of the 'Chansons de Laborde').]

When, in 1741, the 'Well-Beloved' passed through Reims, Dom Chatelain, after rejoicing over the year's vintage having been a very fine one, adds that it was drunk to a considerable extent and with the greatest joy in the world during the ten days that the King remained in the city. 'It was no longer a question,' he exclaims exultingly, 'of sending for Burgundy or Laon wine.' Three years later, when traversing the Champagne, on his way to Metz, he again halted at Reims; and after hearing mass, 'retired to the Archevêché, where the Corps de la Ville presented his Majesty with the wines of the town, which he ordered to be taken to his apartments.'[175] Wine was also presented to the Prince de Soubise, Governor of the Champagne; the Duke de Villeroy, M. d'Argenson, and the Count de Joyeuse; whilst, for the benefit of the populace, four fountains of the same fluid flowed at the corners of the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville.[176] In like manner, at the inauguration of that 'brazen lie,' the statue of this same Louis XV., in 1767, wine flowed in rivers from the different fountains of the city.[177]

The satyr-like sovereign of France was by no means the only monarch of his time who appreciated sparkling Champagne. Frederick the Great has praised its consoling powers in the doggerel which Voltaire was engaged to turn into poetry; and George II. of England at St. James's, and Stanislas Leczinski of Poland at Nancy, both quaffed of the same vintage of Ay despatched in 1754 from the cellars of Bertin du Rocheret. Marshal Saxe, during his sojourn in 1745 at Brussels, where he held a quasi-royal court, of which Mademoiselle de Navarre was the bright particular star, drew an ample supply of Champagne from the cellars of that lady's father, Claude Hevin de Navarre of Avenay, who had established himself as a wine merchant in the Belgian capital.[178] Despite, too, the continued outcry of some connoisseurs,[179] the _vin mousseux_ became the universal source of inspiration for the cabaret-haunting poets of that graceless witty epoch.[180] Voltaire, all unmoved by the excellent still Champagne with which he and the Duke de Richelieu had been regaled at Epernay by Bertin du Rocheret in May 1735, persisted in singing the praises of the effervescing wine of Ay, in the sparkling foam of which he professed to find the type of the French nation:[181]

'Chloris and Eglé, with their snowy hands,
Pour out a wine of Ay, whose prisoned foam,
Tightly compressed within its crystal home,
Drives out the cork; 'midst laughter's joyous sound
It flies, against the ceiling to rebound.
The sparkling foam of this refreshing wine
The brilliant image of us French does shine.'

The Commander Descartes seems not to have been afraid to extol the charms of the sparkling wine to the younger Bertin du Rocheret, as stern a decrier of its merits as his father had previously been. In a letter dated December 1735, asking for 'one or two dozen bottles of sparkling white wine, neither _vert_ nor _liquoreux_, "I should like," he says, "some

Of that delectable white wine
Which foams and sparkles in the glass,
And seldom mortal lips does pass;
But cheers, at festivals divine,
The gods to whom it owes its birth,
Or else the great, our gods on earth."'[182]

Amongst other versifiers of this epoch enamoured with the merits of the wine may be cited Charles Lebatteux, professor of rhetoric at Reims University, who in 1739 composed an ode, 'In Civitatem Remensam,' containing the following invocation to Bacchus:

''Tis not on the icy-topped mountains of Thrace,
Or those of Rhodope, thy favours I trace--
Not there to invoke thee I'd roam.
No! Reims sees thee reign sovereign lord o'er her hills;
There I offer my vows, and the nectar that thrills
To my soul I will seek close at home.

Whether Venus-like rising midst foam sparkling white,
Or wrapped in a mantle of rose rich and bright,
Thou seekest my senses to fire,
Come aid me to sing, for my Muse is full fain
To owe on this day each melodious strain
To the fervour 'tis thine to inspire.'[183]

Bertin du Rocheret, who by no means shared his friend Voltaire's admiration for the sparkling vintage of Ay, sang the praises of the still wine of the Champagne after the following fashion in 1741:

'No, such blockheads do not sip
Of that most delicious wine;
Soul of love and fellowship,
Sweet as truly 'tis benign.
No, their palate, spoilt and worn,
Craves adult'rate juice to drain;
Poison raw which we should scorn,
Beverage fit for frantic brain.
Let us, therefore, hold as fools
Such as now feign to despise
Those _balsamic molecules_
Horace used to sing and prize.

No, such blockheads do not sip
Of that most delicious wine;
Soul of joy and fellowship,
Sweet as truly 'tis benign.
Of that wine, so purely white,
Which the sternest mood makes pass,
And which sparkles yet more bright
In your eyes than in my glass.
Drink, then, drink; I pledge you, dear,
In the nectar old we prize;
Sparkling in our glasses clear,
But more brightly in your eyes.'[184]

Marmontel, the author of _Bélisaire_ and editor of the _Mercure de France_, found inspiration in his youthful days in the sparkling wine of Champagne. He describes, in somewhat fatuous style, the results of an invitation he received from Mademoiselle de Navarre to pass some months with her in 1746 at Avenay, where her father owned several vineyards, and where, she added, 'It will be very unfortunate if with me and some excellent vin de Champagne you do not produce good verses.' He tells how, in stormy weather, she insisted, on account of her fear of lightning, on dining in the cellars, where, 'in the midst of fifty thousand bottles of Champagne, it was difficult not to lose one's head;' and how he was accustomed to read to her the verses thus jointly inspired when seated together on a wooded hillock, rising amidst the vineyards of Avenay.[185]

The foregoing in some degree recalls the circumstances under which Gluck, whose fame began to be established about this epoch, was accustomed to seek his musical inspirations. The celebrated composer of _Orpheus_ and _Iphegenia in Aulis_ was wont, when desirous of a visit from the 'divine afflatus,' to seat himself in the midst of a flowery meadow with a couple of bottles of Champagne by his side. By the time these were emptied, the air he was in search of was discovered and written down.

The lively and good-humoured Abbé de l'Attaignant, whose occupations as a canon of Reims Cathedral seem to have allowed him an infinite quantity of spare time to devote to versifying, addressed some rather indifferent rhymes to Madame de Blagny on the cork of a bottle of Champagne exploding in her hand;[186] and in some lines to Madame de Boulogne, on her pouring out Champagne for him at table, he maintains that the nectar poured out by Ganymede to Jupiter at his repasts must yield to this vintage.[187]

That boon convivialist Panard--who flourished at the same epoch, and was one of the chief songsters of the original Caveau, and a man of whom it was said that, 'when set running, the tide of song flowed on till the cask was empty'--has not neglected sparkling Champagne in his Bacchanalian compositions. The 'La Fontaine of Vaudeville,' as Marmontel dubbed him, does not hesitate to admit that he preferred the popping of Champagne corks to the martial strains of drum and trumpet.[188] The wine, moreover, furnishes him with frequent illustrations for his code of careless philosophy.

'Doctor for vintner vials fills
Most carefully, with lymph of wells.
Champagne, that grew on Nanterre's hills,
Vintner in turn to doctor sells.
So still we find, as on we jog
Throughout the world, 'tis dog bite dog.'[189]

Elsewhere Panard gives expression to the Bacchanalian sentiment, which he seems to have made his rule of life, in the following terms:

'Let's quit this vain world, with its pleasures that cloy,
A destiny tranquil and sweet to enjoy:
Descend to my cellar, and there taste the charms
Of Champagne and Beaune;
Our pleasure will there be without the alarms
Of any joy queller;
For the _ennui_ that often mounts up to the throne
Will never descend to the cellar.'[190]

The poet appears to have rivalled one of the characters in his piece, _Les Festes Sincères_ (represented on the 5th October 1744 on the occasion of the King's convalescence), who, after describing how wine was freely proffered to all comers, said that he had contented himself with thirty glasses, 'half Burgundy and half Champagne.'

In a piece of verse entitled 'La Charme du Vaudeville à Table,' Panard sketches in glowing colours the inspiriting effect of sparkling Champagne upon such a joyous company of periwigged beaux and patched and powdered beauties as we may imagine to be assembled at the hospitable board of some rich financier of the epoch.

''Tis then some joyous guest
A flask, filled with the best
Of Reims or Ay, securely sealed, holds up;
He deftly cuts the string,
Aloft the cork takes wing;
The rest with eager eyes
Thrust glasses t'wards the prize,
And watch the nectar foaming o'er the cup.

They sip, they drink, they laugh,
And then anew they quaff
Their bumpers, crowned above the brim with foam
That gives to laughter birth,
And makes fresh bursts of mirth.
Its spirit and its fire
Unto the brain aspire,
And rouse the wit of which this is the home.'[191]

To its praise he also devotes a poetic _tour de force_, the concluding verses of which may thus be rendered:

'Thanks to the bowl
That cheers my soul,
No care can make me shrink.
The foam divine
Of this gray wine,[192]
I think,

When it I drain,
Gives to each vein
A link.
Source of pure joy,
Without alloy,
Come, dear one, fain I'd drink!

Divine Champagne,
All grief and pain
In thee I gladly sink.
All ills agree
Away from thee
To slink.

Sweet to the nose
As new-blown rose
Or pink.
With gifts that ease
And charms that please,
Come, dear one, fain I'd drink!'[193]

Despite the success achieved by the _vin mousseux_, merchants, owing to the excessive breakage of the bottles--of the cause of which and of the means of stopping it they were equally ignorant--often saw their hopes of fortune fly away with the splintered fragments of the shattered glass.[194] The following passages from the /MS./ notes of the founder of one of the first houses of Reims, written in 1770, would imply some knowledge of the fact that a _liquoreux_ wine was likely to lead to a destructive _casse_, and also that the importance of the trade in sparkling Champagne was far greater during the first half of the eighteenth century than is usually supposed.[195] The /MS./ in question says: 'In 1746 I bottled 6000 bottles of a very _liquoreux_ wine; I had only 120 bottles of it left. In 1747 there was less _liqueur_; the breakage amounted to one-third of the whole. In 1748 it was more vinous and less _liquoreux_; the breakage was only a sixth. In 1759 it was more _rond_, and the breakage was only a tenth. In 1766 the wine of Jacquelet was very _rond_; the breakage was only a twentieth.'[196]

The writer then proceeds to recommend, as a means of preventing breakage, that the wine should not be bottled till the _liqueur_ had almost disappeared, and that, if necessary, fermentation should be checked by well beating the wine. But as at that epoch there was really no means of effectually testing this disappearance, and as the beating theory was an utterly fallacious one, the followers of his precepts remained with the sad alternative of producing in too many instances either _mousses folles_ and their inevitable accompaniment of disastrous breakage, or wine so mature as to be incapable of continuing its fermentation in bottle, and producing _mousse_ at all.[197]

It is therefore evident that much of the sparkling wine drunk at the commencement of the last century was what we should call _crémant_, or, as it was then styled, _sablant_,[198] as otherwise the breakage would have been something frightful. Bertin du Rocheret plainly indicates after 1730 a difference between the fiercely frothing kinds, to which the term _saute bouchon_ or pop-cork was applied, and wine that was merely _mousseux_.[199] The price of the former is the highest, ranging up to 3 livres 6 sols, whilst that of the _bon mousseux_ does not exceed 50 sols, the difference in the two being no doubt based to a certain extent on the loss by breakage.[200]

Hence, too, a partiality for weak sour growths for making _vin mousseux_, as, although science could give no reason, experience showed that with these the breakage would be less than with those of a saccharine nature.[201] Thus Bertin writes in 1744 that the vineyards of Avize, planted for the most part in 1715, and almost entirely with white grapes, only produced a thin wine, with a tartness that caused it to be one of the least esteemed in the district; but that 'since the mania for the _saute bouchon_, that abominable beverage, which has become yet more loathsome from an insupportable acidity,' the Avize wines had increased in value eightfold.[202] To this acidity the Abbé Bignon refers in a poem of 1741, in which, protesting against the partiality for violently effervescing wines, he says:

'Your palate is a cripple
Worn out by fiery tipple,
Or else it would prefer juice
Of grapes to fizzing verjuice.'[203]

This serves to explain the preference so long accorded by _gourmets_ to the finer _non mousseux_ wines, full of aroma and flavour, and often sugary and _liquoreux_, but looked upon by the general public up to the close of the eighteenth century as inferior to those which were sharp, strong, and even sourish, but which effervesced well.[204] Lingering relics of prejudice against sparkling wine existed as late as 1782, when that conscientious observer, Legrand d'Aussy, remarked that since it had been known that sparkling wines were green wines bottled in spring, when the universal revolution of Nature causes them to enter into fermentation, they had not been so much esteemed, the _gourmets_ of that day preferring those which did not sparkle.[205]

It was not till the close of the eighteenth century that any attempt was openly made to improve sparkling Champagne by the addition of sugar.[206] Science then came forward to prove that such an addition was not contrary to the nature of wine, and that fermentation converted the saccharine particles of the must into alcohol, and increased the vinosity.[207] Several growers began to profit by this discovery of Chaptal, though, as a rule, those who followed his recommendations in secret were loudest in asserting that Providence alone had rendered their wine better than that of their neighbours.[208] M. Nicolas Perrier of Epernay, an ex-monk of Prémontré, pointed out, at the beginning of the present century, that up to that period sugar was only regarded as a means of rendering the wine more pleasant to drink, and had always been added after fermentation, and as late as possible. This practice was favoured by the tyrannical routine reigning among the peasants of not tasting the wine till December or January, when in 1800 a decisive experience confirmed the value of the new discoveries. Numerous demands for wine during the vintage led to anticipations of a brisk and speedy sale, and sugar was thereupon added at the time of the first fermentation, merely with the view, however, of bringing the wine more forward for the buyer to taste. The result went beyond the expectations entertained; and at Ay wines of the second class, commonly called _vins de vignerons_, rose to a price previously unheard of.[209]

The present system of clearing the wine in bottles was not practised formerly. People were then not so particular about its perfect limpidity; besides which the wine consumed at the beginning of the year[210] had not time to deposit, and that bottled as _mousseux_, owing to its being originally made from carefully-selected grapes, formed very little sediment in the flask.[211] The method of _collage_ employed at the Abbey of Hautvillers is said to have preserved the wines from this evil. Whether this method transpired, or other people discovered it, is unknown; but certainly Bertin du Rocheret transmitted it, or something very similar, in July 1752 to his correspondent in London, who bottled Champagne wines regularly every year.[212]

The necessity of ridding the wine of the deposit which deprived it of its limpidity was, however, recognised later on. At first no other method suggested itself, excepting to _dépoter_ it--that is, to decant it into another bottle; a plan fraught, in the case of sparkling wines, with several disadvantages. At the commencement of the present century, however, the system of _dégorgeage_ was substituted.[213] As at first practised, each bottle was held neck downwards, and either shaken or tapped at the bottom to detach the sediment, the operation being constantly repeated until the deposit had settled in the neck, when it was driven out by the force of the explosion which followed upon the removal of the cork. Somewhat later the plan now followed of placing the bottles in sloping racks and turning them every day was adopted, to the great saving of time and labour. Its discovery has been popularly attributed to Madame Clicquot; but the fact is the suggestion emanated from a person in her employ named Müller. The idea is said to have simultaneously occurred to a workman in Marizet's house of the name of Thommassin.

Although the advent of such a delectable beverage as sparkling Champagne proved of much benefit to the world in general, and the wine-merchants of Reims and Epernay in particular, those most immediately concerned in its production had little or no reason to rejoice over its renown. The hapless peasants, from whose patches of vineyard it was to a great extent derived, were the last to profit by its popularity. Bidet, writing in 1759, foreshadows the misery which marked the last thirty years of the _ancien régime_.[214] Speaking of the important trade in wine carried on by the city of Reims, he urges that this would in reality be benefited by the old decrees, prohibiting the planting of new vineyards in the Champagne, being enforced to the letter. Extensive plantations of vines in land suitable for the growth of corn had doubled and even tripled the value of arable land, and caused a rise in the price of wheat. Manure, so necessary to bring these new plantations into bearing, and wood, owing to the demand for vine-stakes, barrel-staves, &c., had risen to thrice their former value. Recent epidemics had cost the lives of a large number of vine-dressers, and public _corvées_ occupied the survivors a great part of the year, and hence a considerable increase in the cost of cultivation, landowners having to pay high wages to labourers from a distance. 'Putting together all these excessive charges, with the crushing dues levied in addition upon vine-land as well as upon the sale and transport of wine, the result will infallibly be that the more profitable the wine-trade formerly was to Reims and to the vineyards of the environs, the more it will languish in the end, till it becomes a burden to all the vineyard owners.' Happily these gloomy forebodings have since been completely falsified.

Reims accorded an enthusiastic welcome to the youthful and ill-fated Marie Antoinette, on her passage through the city on May 12, 1770, shortly after her arrival in France;[215] and five years subsequently the Rémois were regaled with the splendours of a coronation, when the young King, Louis XVI., and his radiant Queen passed beneath the elaborately wrought escutcheon surmounting the Porte de Paris, expressly forged by a blacksmith of Reims in honour of the occasion,[216] and received from the hands of the Lieutenant des Habitans the three silver keys of the city.[217] The King was crowned on the 11th June by the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, Charles Antoine de la Roche Aymon, a prelate who had previously baptised, confirmed, and married him, when the six lay peers were represented by Monsieur (the Count of Provence), the Count d'Artois, the Dukes of Orleans, Chartres, and Bourbon, and the Prince de Condé. The royal train was borne by the Prince de Lambesq; the Marshal de Clermont Tonnerre officiated as Constable; and the sceptre, crown, and hand of justice were carried respectively by the Marshals de Contades, de Broglie, and de Nicolai.[218] How the ill-fated King exclaimed, as the crown of Charlemagne was placed upon his brow, 'It hurts me,' even as Henri III. had cried, under the same circumstances, 'It pricks me,' and how his natural benevolence led him to slur over that portion of the coronation oath in which he ought to have bound himself to exterminate all heretics, are matters of history. An innovation to be noted is, that at the banquet at the archiepiscopal palace, after the ceremony, the youthful sovereign did _not_ sit alone in solitary state beneath a canopy of purple velvet, ornamented with golden fleurs de lis, with his table encumbered by the great gold _nef_, the crown and the sceptres, the Constable, sword in hand, close by him, and the Grand Echanson and Ecuyer Tranchant tasting his wine and cutting his food,[219] circumstances under which 'the roast must be without savour and the Ai without bouquet.'[220] The King on this occasion admitted his brothers to his board; and the ecclesiastical peers, the lay peers, the ambassadors, and the great officers of the crown formed, as usual, four groups at the remaining tables, whilst the Queen and her ladies witnessed the gustatory exploits from a gallery.

(From a painting by Moreau).]

The frightful oppression of _tailles_, _aides_, _corvées_, _gabelles_, and other dues that crushed the hapless peasant in the pre-Revolutionary era, weighed with especial severity upon the _vigneron_. In virtue of the _droit de gros_, the officers could at any hour make an inventory of his wine, decree how much he might consume himself, and tax him for the remainder.[221] The _fermiers généraux_, who farmed the taxes of the province, became his sleeping partners, and had their share in his crop.[222] In a vineyard at Epernay, upon four pieces of wine, the average produce of an arpent, and valued at 600 francs, the _ferme_ levied first 30 francs, and then when the pieces were sold 75 francs more.[223] The ecclesiastical tithe was also a heavy burden, at Hautvillers the eleventh of the wine being taken as _dismes_, at Dizy the twelfth, and at Pierry the twentieth.[224] The result was one continuous struggle of trickery on the part of the grower, and cunning on that of the officers.[225] The visits of the latter were paid almost daily, and their registers recorded every drop of wine in the cellars of the inhabitants.[226]

But the wine had by no means acquitted all its dues. The merchant buying it had to pay another 75 francs to the _ferme_ before despatching it to the consumer. When he did despatch it, the _ferme_ strictly prescribed the route it was to take, any deviation from this being punished by confiscation; and it had to pay at almost every step. Transport by water was excessively onerous from constantly recurring tolls, and by land whole days were lost in undergoing examinations and verifications and making payments.[227] The commissionnaire charged with the conveyance of Bertin du Rocheret's wine to Calais from Epernay had from 70 to 75 francs per poinçon. Despite all these drawbacks, the export trade must have been considerable, for we are told that prior to the Revolution the profits on supplying two or three abbeys of Flanders were sufficient to enable a wine-merchant of Reims to live in good style.[228]