Then DAUBINET, remembering that we are literally “here to-day and gone to-morrow,” says we must visit his friend the Vicomte.  I cannot catch the Vicomte’s name; I manage to do so for half an hour at a time, and then it escapes me.  As we are in this champagney country, I write it down as M. le Vicomte DE CHAMPAGNIAC.  We are to dine and sleep there.  A Night in a French Chateau.  “But this is another story.”

On our arrival at the Chateau de Quelquechose we are right royally and heartily received.  Delightful evening. Vive la Compagnie!  Magnificent view from my bedroom.  In the clear moonlight I can see right away for miles and miles over the Champagne valleys.  At 6.30 we are in the break, and within an hour or so are “All among the barley,” as the song used to say, which I now apply to “All amongst the Vineyards.”  Peasants at work everywhere:  picking and sorting.  How they must dislike grapes!  Of course they are all teetotallers, and no more touch a drop of champagne than a grocer eats his own currants, or a confectioner his own sweetmeats.  I suppose the butcher lives exclusively on fish, and his friend, the neighbouring fishmonger, is entirely dependent on the butcher for his sustenance, except when game is in, and then both deal with the gamester or poulterer.  There are some traders in necessaries who can make a fair deal all round.  The only exception to this rule, for which, from personal observation, I can vouch, is the tobacconist, who is always smoking his own cigars.

Wonderful this extensive plain of vineyards! and what stunted little stumps with leaves round them are all these vines!  Not in it with our own graceful hops.  No hedges or ditches to separate one owner’s property from another’s.  To each little or big patch of land there is a white headstone with initials on it, as if somebody had hurriedly and unostentatiously been buried on the spot where he fell, killed in the Battle of the Vineyards, by a grape-shot.  At first, seeing so many of these white headstones with initials on each one, I conclude that it is some peculiar French way of marking distances or laying out plots, and I find my conclusion is utterly erroneous.

“These white stones,” M. VESQUIER. explains, “mark the boundaries of different properties.”  Odd!  The plain is cut up into little patches, and champagne-growers, like knowing birds, have popped down, on “here a bit and there a bit and everywhere a bit” from time to time, so that one headstone records the fact that “here lies the property of J.M.,” and within a few feet is another headstone “sacred to the memory of P. and G.,” or P. without the G.; then removed but a step or two is a stone with a single “A.” on it. and a short distance from the road is “H.”—­poor letter “H” apparently dropped for ever.  Here lie “M.,” and “M. and C.,” and several other heroes whose names recall many a glorious champagne.  And so on, and so on; the initials recurring again quite unexpectedly, the plots of ground held by the same proprietor being far apart.  But, as it suddenly occurs to me, if these champagne-growers are all in the same plains for twenty miles or more round about, all in much the same position, and all the grapes apparently the same, why isn’t it all the same wine?