To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "_Vive la guerre!_" and "_Vive la gloire!_"
"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"
"_Eh bien!_" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as ever I heard, "_Vive la mort!_"
In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup--a _coup de l'étrier_--to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "_Mais pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!_"
I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to the quantity--scrupulously taking care that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the tub--that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to--the results of all this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened neighbours.