’They have their ready-made at these shops—­last year’s:  perhaps, never mind, do for the day,’ said Mr. Radnor, impatient for eating, now that he had spoken of it.  ’A basin of turtle; I can’t wait.  A brush of the coat; mud must be dry by this time.  Clear turtle, I think, with a bottle of the Old Veuve.  Not bad news to tell?  You like that Old Veuve?’

‘Too well to tell bad news of her,’ said Mr. Fenellan in a manner to reassure his friend, as he intended.  ’You wouldn’t credit it for the Spring of the year, without the spotless waistcoat?’

‘Something of that, I suppose.’  And so saying, Mr. Radnor entered the shop of his quest, to be complimented by the shopkeeper, while the attendants climbed the ladder to upper stages for white-waistcoat boxes, on his being; the first bird of the season; which it pleased him to hear; for the smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone to this brightly-constituted gentleman.

CHAPTER III

OLD VEUVE

They were known at the house of the turtle and the attractive Old Veuve:  a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths; and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot.  The silly girly sugary crudity his given way to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; they ascend; but hue and flavour tell of a soul that has come to a lodgement there.  It conducts the youthful man to temples of dusky thought:  philosophers partaking of it are drawn by the arms of garlanded nymphs about their necks into the fathomless of inquiries.  It presents us with a sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most.  It bubbles over mellowness; it has, in the marriage with Time, extracted a spice of individuality from the saccharine:  by miracle, one would say, were it not for our knowledge of the right noble issue of Time when he and good things unite.  There should be somewhere legends of him and the wine-flask.  There must be meanings to that effect in the Mythology, awaiting unravelment.  For the subject opens to deeper than cellars, and is a tree with vast ramifications of the roots and the spreading growth, whereon half if not all the mythic Gods, Inferior and Superior, Infernal and Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, performing in concert, harmoniously receiving sacrificial offerings of the black or the white; and the black not extinguishing the fairer fellow.  Tell us of a certainty that Time has embraced the wine-flask, then may it be asserted (assuming the great year for the wine, i.e. combinations above) that a speck of the white within us who drink will conquer, to rise in main ascension over volumes of the black.  It may, at a greater venture, but confidently, be said in plain speech, that the Bacchus of auspicious birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier Deities.