environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
has this peculiarity--its veritable spring, its pride of May, arrives
in the autumn.

[Illustration: ADMIRATION.]

One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a beggar. He
was sitting on Grandstone's steps as we emerged. Aged hardly fourteen,
he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes coming up from the
kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence that amused me. The
maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and the remainders of
our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme breadth and
intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he laid by the
biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same time he
produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass, nicked at the
rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his bowl, he drank to
the health of the waitress with the easiest politeness it was ever my
lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, courteous as a hidalgo
by Velasquez, he added a grace and an epicurism completely French.
I thought him the best possible figure-head for that opulent spot,
cradle of the hilarity of the world. I gave him five francs.

[Illustration: MAC MEURTRIER.]

We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay,
its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They
are subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
religion are they the representations? They are cellar-doors.