If it looks like rain no sunflower is more yellow than their countenances; if the cold is unusual every face is pale, and should a frost appear imminent, those whose affairs are the most compromised, pack up their effects and make ready for a start. But on the other hand, if the sky is serene and the wind warm, husbands are actually seen embracing their wives, and promising them any toilette they may fancy. Should the heat become Bengalic and insupportable oh! then all Burgundy is dancing and running to the vineyards,--all the Morvinians fly to the hills to enjoy the cool breezes and admire the luxuriant panorama beneath and around them.
But for some months previous to the _vendange_, no one but a proprietor has the right to enter a vineyard; at this period a perfect calm and silence reigns, and they become an asylum, a veritable land of Goshen, an oasis for all the partridges, hares, and rabbits of the neighbourhood. In order to prevent gentlemen and professional poachers from cruising in these delightful latitudes, killing the game and injuring the vines, a number of _gardes champêtres_, generally old soldiers, are chosen, who armed with an old sabre, post themselves on some height which commands the vineyard, ready to lay violent hands on any delinquent that may make his appearance. But in spite of the _garde champêtre_, his long sabre, their interminable cut and thrust, and his eternal _de par la loi, arretez!_ there is a sport in the early morning, called _à la traulée_, which is not without its charms.
The vineyards of Burgundy are for the most part divided into sections, that is to say, at from two to three hundred paces the contiguity of the vines is interrupted, and a small road, which serves during the _vendange_ to facilitate the communication and transport of the grapes, is cut in the vineyard. At daylight, therefore, before the sun is above the horizon, or the white fog hanging in the valleys has been dispersed by his rays, and the fashionable gentleman of the town is on the point of going to bed, the sportsman, always keen and on the alert, arrives, walks slowly and carefully along the roads I have just mentioned, looking cautiously right and left, and between the intervals of the vines on either side of him.