Demand created supply, until, in 1667, a few years after the Restoration, France furnished two-fifths of the amount of wine consumed in the kingdom;[268] and the taste of the royal sybarite for the light-coloured wines of the Marne seems to be hinted at in Malagene's exclamation:
'I have discovered a treasure of pale wine.... I assure you 'tis the same the King drinks of.'[269]
St. Evremond, who, though not precisely cast by Nature from 'the mould of form,' fulfilled for many years the duties of arbiter elegantiarum at Charles's graceless Court, decidedly did his best to render the Champagne _flûte_ 'the glass of fashion.' Ever ready to speak in praise of the wines of Ay, Avenay, and Reims,[270] the mentor of the Count de Grammont strove by example as well as by precept to win converts to his creed. In verse he declares that the beauties of the country fail to console him for the absence of Champagne; regrets that the season of the wines of the Marne is over, and that the yield of those of the Mountain had failed; and shudders at the prospect of being obliged to have recourse to the Loire, to Bordeaux, or to Cahors for the wine he will have to drink.[271]
The lively Frenchman found plenty of native writers to reëcho him. Champagne sparkles in all the plays of the Restoration, and seems the fitting inspiration of their matchless briskness of dialogue. The Millamours and Bellairs, the Carelesses and Rangers, the Sir Joskin Jolleys and Sir Fopling Flutters, the _beaux_ of the Mall and the rakes of the Mulberry and New Spring Gardens, the gay frequenters of the Folly on the Thames and the _habitués_ of Pontack's Ordinary, whom the contemporary dramatists transferred bodily to the stage of the King's or the Duke's, are constantly tossing off bumpers of it. Their lives would seem to have been one continuous round of love-making and Champagne-drinking, to judge from the following 'catch,' sung by four merry gentlemen at a period when, according to Redding, ten thousand tuns of French wine were annually pouring into England:
'The pleasures of love and the joys of good wine, To perfect our happiness, wisely we join; We to Beauty all day Give the sovereign sway, And her favourite nymphs devoutly obey. At the plays we are constantly making our court, And when they are ended we follow the sport