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The two roads diverged after passing Fontainebleau, the shorter by Nemours and the longer by Moret. The first road was the smoother, but apart from the chance of seeing the Vendange the route de Burgoyne was far the more picturesque. Smollett's portraiture of the peasantry in the less cultivated regions prepares the mind for Young's famous description of those "gaunt emblems of famine."
They remedied the former defect by adding a little gloria, a thin, sweet wine kept in store from the preceding vendange; this was done in April or in May, when the vintage was received at headquarters. Ropiness was cured by repeated rackings and by brandying, eight gallons per pipe being the normal ratio.
In a wine country the vendange is certainly the most exciting and merriest season of the year it is a succession of delightful fêtes in the open air, of repasts amongst the vines and under the shade of the peach-trees, riding-parties in the forest, whose echoes are awakened by the melancholy notes of the horn, water-parties on the lakes, dances in the field and round the wine-press, &c.
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.
He had also, it seemed, to ask us to be so infinitely obliging as to excuse him for one hour after dinner our postcard had come unexpectedly, he said, and already he had made an appointment with his agent about the vendange for the coming autumn.... We, begged him, of course, not to allow us to interfere with his business in the slightest degree. He thanked us a thousand times.
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
In advance of this delighted and merry crowd, and always like the lark, the first on the wing, the sportsman is already at his post, for the first day of the vendange is, as Navarre used to say, a day of powder, the fête du fusil.
But the moment approaches when the comparative calm and protection which the poor animals enjoy will cease their days of fun and festival are numbered; their enemies up to this period have been few the rich proprietors, the privileged, but now the masses are preparing, they are cleaning up their clumsy blunderbusses, and to-morrow "the million" will take the field and assail and pop at them from every road and pathway for the mayor, after due consultation with the principal personages in the village, has sent his drummer, his Mercury, his crier, to beat a tattoo in all the public places, and crossways, and announce in front of the cabarets that the grapes being ripe the vendange is opened.
The most celebrated of these fairs is that held on the First of September, to which whole hamlets send all their able-bodied men and women, who hire themselves to the great proprietors for the vendange for this in Burgundy and Le Morvan is the great work, the chief event of the year; it is on the vendange that depend the commerce, the tranquillity and happiness of the country.
The vendange returned once more; but the perfumed gentleman, the villain from the capital, came not again. Herminie was desirous of assisting in the labours of the season.
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