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But this is a digression. Early in the nineteenth century a famous lady, whose name, for obvious reasons, I forbear to indicate even by an initial, had inherited great wealth under a will which, to put it mildly, occasioned much surprise. She shared an opera-box with a certain Lady D , who loved the flowing wine-cup not wisely, but too well.
The border thanes had by his orders each remained with his own following, so that at all times they should be in readiness to give orders and lead them in case of surprise. "Where have you been, young thanes?" Gurth asked. "You slipped away as soon as our meal was finished, as if you were afraid of the wine-cup."
He paused, being upon his feet, a man of about thirty years, richly dressed, and out of reason good to look at. In his hand was a great wine-cup, and he held it high. "I drink to those who follow after!" he cried. "I drink to those who fail pebbles cast into water whose ring still wideneth, reacheth God knows what unguessable shore where loss may yet be counted gain!
Here too, as everywhere before, I saw alcohol flowing copiously, the most prevalent kind being wine. On Exhibition and Commencement Days, every student honored with a "part" was accustomed at his room to make his friends and acquaintances free of the cake-basket and especially of the wine-cup. At all such times there was more or less intoxication.
A custom which exists still in several cantons of the Basque country, and even at the centre of France in Morvan, a mountainous district of the department of the Nievre, would that the maiden should appear only at the end of the banquet, and holding in her hand a filled wine-cup, and that the guest to whom she should present it should become the husband of her choice.
It is the serene joy of a nation, and not the passionate impulse of a man. Observe, from beginning to end, its intention is to give expression by the serpentine line to that sentiment of beautiful Life which was the worship of the Greeks; but they did not toss it off, like a wine-cup at a feast.
Our Vedic forefathers intoxicated themselves with the juice of the "soma"; Noah, by a not unnatural reaction against a superfluity of water, appears to have taken the earliest practicable opportunity of qualifying that which he was obliged to drink; and the ghosts of the ancient Egyptians were solaced by pictures of banquets in which the wine-cup passes round, graven on the walls of their tombs.
Praise, praise, I want unceasing praise. I cannot live if my wine-cup be left empty for a single moment. So, as the very price of my life, I want Sandip of all the world, today. When my husband nowadays comes in for his meals I feel I cannot sit before him; and yet it is such a shame not to be near him that I feel I cannot do that either. So I seat myself where we cannot look at each other's face.
The sorrow which weighed on his heart had not wrinkled his brow, but had given him a set dignity of purpose. His tall figure, which his present dress allowed to be seen, was perfect in its symmetry of strength. His bright chestnut hair clustered round his forehead, and his eye shone like that of a hawk. They must have been wrong who said that he commonly spent his nights over the wine-cup.
The figures were carved by the most skilful wood-carvers of Paris, and the play was written by a pious monk of the Benedictines." The jester seemed not to be listening very attentively. He twirled the stem of the wine-cup in his hand, crooning, "'Fantoccini, fantoccino, Chi s'arrischia baldacchino, Ognuno per se, Diavolo per tutti."
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