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"Most gracious sir!" he cried amid the clash of trumpets "most gracious sir, the man is no longer there. He has gone and can no longer be seen in the street!" The Stadtholder gave a slight nod of the head, and proceeded to bid his guests welcome. Sumptuous was the feast, choice were the viands, and costly the fragrant wines.
In taste it did not resemble European wines: it was very sweet and spicy; and, quaffed slowly, in small sips, it produced in all the limbs a sensation of agreeable drowsiness. Muzio made Fabio and Valeria drink a cup apiece, and drank one himself. Bending over her cup, he whispered something and shook his fingers.
Harrigan, still with clouded mind, raised the glass and drank. It was a fine sherry wine. "How old would you say that wine was?" queried the Scotchman with exaggerated carelessness. The carelessness did not deceive Harrigan. His mind went blanker still, for he knew little about good wines. "Well?" asked the engineer.
It is natural enough that an Arabian prophet should dwell with rapture on the groves, the fountains, and the rivers of paradise; but instead of inspiring the blessed inhabitants with a liberal taste for harmony and science, conversation and friendship, he idly celebrates the pearls and diamonds, the robes of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines, artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of sensual and costly luxury, which becomes insipid to the owner, even in the short period of this mortal life.
"'Cos I know a place where they sell the best glass o' port wine in London," ses the man. He took Sam up two or three turnings, and then led him into a quiet little pub in a back street. There was a cosy little saloon bar with nobody in it, and, arter Sam had 'ad two port wines for the look of the thing, he 'ad a pint o' six-ale because he liked it.
For the same reason, Spaniards drink water, and are satisfied; whereas English wine-merchants add brandy to a good many foreign wines, or they would be quite unacceptable from being deficient in combustible.
Subha Datta was very fond of showing off what he could do, and sometimes asked his old friends amongst the woodcutters to come and have a meal with him. When they arrived they would find all sorts of good things spread out on the ground and different kinds of wines in beautiful bottles.
I tried to point out its advantages once to an English University man. "Aoh!" he said, "you know at Oxford we had our wines and we weren't bothered by people." But it is just the people part of it that is amusing, the more so if the background is the Street of a French or an Italian town.
The principal exports of France are wines, brandy, vinegar, fruit, oil, woollen cloth of a very fine quality, silk, perfumery, &c.: the imports are Baltic produce, the manufactures of England; fruits, drugs, raw wool, leather, &c. from Spain, Italy, and the Mediterranean states. The next division of Europe comprehends Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece.
It certainly was not the vine. The language of the Hebrew Scripture concerning it, and the sacred use to which it is consecrated in the Gospels, forbid that notion utterly; at least to those who know enough of antiquity to pass by, with a smile, the theory that the wines mentioned in Scripture were not intoxicating.