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Down in the bottom of a deep locker he found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These had come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch along with the home-preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in the galley heat had effected some sort of a change in the thick sweet wine branded it, I imagine. I took a taste. Delicious!
Supper over I paid my bill, and asked the landlord to get me a carriage and pair of horses to take me to Salerno early the next morning. I thanked the Greek for his delicious muscatel wine, and, requesting his address in Naples, I assured him that he would see me within a fortnight, as I was determined to secure a cask of his Cerigo.
The duchess presented me with a snuff-box in pale tortoise-shell with arabesque incrustations in gold, and she invited us to dine with her on the morrow, promising to take us after dinner to the Convent of St. Claire to pay a visit to the new nun. As we came out of the palace of the duchess, I left my friends and went alone to Panagiotti's to claim the barrel of muscatel wine.
There were three of us: the fat waiter, who from a gray, dust-covered bottle was pouring out the golden-yellow Muscatel into my glass; then myself, who sat in a nook of the cozy, odd-cornered room and smacked the fragrant wine; and still another guest, who had taken his place at one of the two open windows, a tumbler of red wine lying before him on the window-sill, in his mouth a long brown, smoke-seasoned meerschaum cigar-holder, out of which he wrapped himself in a cloud of smoke.
"Pray excuse me, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "but I never eat Muscatel grapes." Mercedes let them fall, and sighed. A magnificent peach was hanging against an adjoining wall, ripened by the same artificial heat. Mercedes drew near, and plucked the fruit. "Take this peach, then," she said. The count again refused.
And more wrong still, if possible, is that which is drawn from a saying of the mysterious Oenotrians that useful tribe who, wandering in search of homesteads across these regions and observing their beauty, are supposed to have remarked: Hic moremur here let us stay! It is the escutcheon of the town. Near at hand, too, lies the prosperous village Saracena, celebrated of old for its muscatel wines.
Pinocchio then set off running, in hopes that he should reach the Fairy's house before dark. But before long he began to suffer so dreadfully from hunger that he could not bear it, and he jumped into a field by the wayside, intending to pick some bunches of Muscatel grapes. Oh, that he had never done it!
Both on the outward and on the homeward journey he measured distance by this landmark: and in his imagination he lived through a long train of adventures, marvellous as those in the book itself, towards the close of which there appeared an image of himself, grown older and sadder, standing in a moonlit garden with Mercedes who had so many years before slighted his love, and with a sadly proud gesture of refusal, saying: Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.
The wine produced in other localities, which is called Cape wine par excellence, is manufactured from a muscatel grape of a dark straw colour, which seemed to me in flavour preferable to the grape of Provence. We have just said that there are two sorts of Constantia, the red and the white; they are both produced from muscatel grapes of different colours.
"Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes," replied Monte Cristo, as if the subject had not been mentioned before. The countess dashed the grapes into the nearest thicket, with a gesture of despair. "Inflexible man!" she murmured. Monte Cristo remained as unmoved as if the reproach had not been addressed to him. Albert at this moment ran in. "Oh, mother," he exclaimed, "such a misfortune has happened!"
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