time to fire the vestibule stove, which, after fighting hard and smoking
rebelliously at first, sobered down to its winter work, and afforded
Poppi's rheumatism the comfort for which he had longed pined.




Second Paper




I

The winter and the vintage come on together at Villeneuve, and when the
snows had well covered the mountains around, the grapes in the valley
were declared ripe by an act of the Commune. There had been so much rain
and so little sun that their ripeness was hardly attested otherwise.
Fully two-thirds of the crop had blackened with blight; the imperfect
clusters, where they did not hang sodden and mildewed on the vines, were
small and sour. It was sorrowful to see them; and when, about the middle
of October, the people assembled in the vineyards to gather them, the
spectacle had none of that gayety which the poets had taught me to
expect of it. Those poor clusters did not

"reel to earth
Purple and gushing,"

but limply waited the short hooked knife with which the peasants cut
them from their stems; and the peasants, instead of advancing with