Chapter VII: Part I: I (6)

It would certainly be going too far to suggest that flirtation and Champagne must have been introduced simultaneously, yet the former can only have attained perfection since the advent of the latter. Only consider what a failure a picnic or a garden-or water-party, or any other kind of entertainment to which that much-abused term _fête champêtre_ is applied, and where flirtation would be, without Champagne! As a matrimonial agent, Champagne's achievements outdo those of the cleverest of man[oe]uvring mammas. It was solely those two extra glasses at supper which emboldened young Impey Cue of the Foreign Office to summon up sufficient courage to propose in the conservatory to Miss Yellowboy, the great heiress; and Impey Cue now lords it at Yellowboy Park as though to the manor born. Nor must the part it plays on the eventful day when the fatal knot is firmly tied be overlooked. It has been cynically remarked that it is a painful spectacle even for the most hardened to witness the consigning of a victim to the doom matrimonial; and that it becomes all the more painful when, under the futile pretext of festivity, bewildered fathers, harassed mothers, sorrowing sisters, envious cousins, bored connections, and pitying friends, arrayed in their best attire, meet at an abnormally early hour round the miscalled social board. Still, fancy what a wedding breakfast would be without the accompaniment of Champagne!

(From a drawing by John Leech in 'Punch').]

With mamma in tears and papa in the fidgets, the bride half-way towards hysterics, and the bridegroom wishing from the bottom of his heart that the crowded dining-room would suddenly transform itself into a securely-locked first-class coupé speeding onwards in the direction of Dover, the task of those speakers on whom devolves the duty of descanting upon 'the happy occasion which has brought us together' is of a surety no easy one. And it would be still more uphill work were it not for the amount of cheerful inspiration fortunately to be drawn from the familiar foil-topped bottles. By and by, when the more serious speeches have been duly stammered through, and the jovial bachelor--a middle-aged one by preference--rises to propose 'the health of the bridesmaids,' bursts of laughter from the men and responsive titters, bubbling up like the sparkling atoms in the wine which has inspired them, from the lips of the damsels in question and their compeers, prove beyond question that Champagne has done its duty in dissipating the gloom originally prevailing.

A wedding, too, is the customary precursor of other family gatherings at which the vintage of the Marne plays the same enlivening part. There are, for instance, christenings where godfathers bring as their offerings masterpieces of the silversmith's craft, and the infant's health is quaffed by turns in

'Sherry in silver, Hock in gold, and glassed Champagne;'

for the wine of mirth is out of place in metal, however precious, and needs the purest crystal to exhibit all its finer qualities. There are also coming-of-age banquets, whereat young Hopeful is enabled to stumble and stutter through a series of jerky and disjointed phrases of thanks--commonplace as they may be, which never fail to awaken the tenderest emotions in the heart of the maternal author of his being--by the aid of sundry glasses of the sparkling wine of the Marne.

'O the wildfire wine of France!
Quick with fantasies florescent,
Rapturously effervescent,
How its atoms leap and dance!

Floric fount of love and laughter,
Where its emanations rise
All the difficulty dies
From the now and the hereafter.
Through the happy golden haze
Time's gray cheek is bright with dimples,
And his laugh more lightly wimples
Than the sea's on summer days.

Tongue and throat it makes to tingle,
Beats the blood from heart to vein,
And ascending to the brain,
Bids the spirit forth and mingle
With a world no longer grim,
But serene and sweet and spacious,
Where the girls are fair and gracious,
And the Cupids light of limb.

Soul and sense are all untethered!
Who would be an angel when,
Clement king of gods and men,
He can soar so grandly, feathered
With thy plumage, O Champagne?
Bottled gladness! thou magician!
Silver-bearded! mist Elysian!
Ecstasy of sun and rain!

Swift and subtle, glad and glorious,
O the wildfire wine of France!
How its atoms frisk and dance,
Over Fate and Time victorious!'

MAP OF THE

CHAMPAGNE VINEYARDS,

_Reduced, by permission, from the larger Map_.

Drawn by /M. J. Lignier/, Staff-Captain,

For Messrs. MÖET & CHANDON, of Epernay.

The purple tint indicates the Vineyards.

The yellow, the Woods and Forests.

The green, the Meadows.

The blue, the Ponds and Lakes.

The figures indicate the altitudes in metres above the level of the sea.

/Scale in Metres/:

(_2000 Metres are equal to 1-1/4 Miles._)]