[Previous page]...companions, one cannot forget that they
are also objects of our pleasures; nor can they ever forget it.
While employed in dirt and drudgery, some tag of a ribbon, some ring,
or bit of bracelet, earbob or necklace, or something of that kind,
will show that the desire of pleasing is never suspended in them. It
is an honorable circumstance for man, that the first moment he is at
his ease, he allots the internal employments to his female partner,
and takes the external on himself. And this circumstance, or its
reverse, is a pretty good indication that a people are, or are not at
their ease. Among the Indians, this indication fails from a
particular cause: every Indian man is a soldier or warrior, and the
whole body of warriors constitute a standing army, always employed in
war or hunting. To support that army, there remain no laborers but
the women. Here, then, is so heavy a military establishment, that
the civil part of the nation is reduced to women only. But this is a
barbarous perversion of the natural destination of the two sexes.
Women are formed by nature for attentions, not for hard labor. A
woman never forgets one of the numerous train of little offices which
belong to her. A man forgets often.
April 20th.
Nancy. Toule. Void. Ligny en Barrois. Bar le Duc.
St. Dizier. Nancy itself is a neat little town, and its environs
very agreeable. The valley of the little branch of the Moselle, on
which it is, is about a mile wide: the road then crossing the
head-waters of the Moselle, the Maes, and the Marne, the country is
very hilly, and perhaps a third of it poor and in forests of beech:
the other two-thirds from poor up to middling, red, and stony.
Almost entirely in corn, now and then only some vines on the hills.
The Moselle at Toule is thirty or forty yards wide: the Maese near
Void about half that: the Marne at St. Dizier about forty yards.
They all make good plains of from a quarter of a mile to a mile wide.
The hills of the Maese abound with chalk. The rocks coming down from
the tops of the hills, on all the road of this day, at regular
intervals like the ribs of an animal, have a very irregular
appearance. Considerable flocks of sheep and asses, and, in the
approach to St. Dizier, great plantations of apple and cherry trees;
here and there a peach tree, all in general bloom. The roads through
Lorraine are strung with beggars.
April 21st. St. Dizier. Vitry le Fransais. Chalons sur Marne.
Epernay. The plains of the Marne and Sault uniting, appear boundless
to the eye till we approach their confluence at Vitry, where the
hills come in on the right; after that the plains are generally about
a mile, mulatto, of middling quality, sometimes stony. Sometimes the
ground goes off from the river so sloping, that one does not know
whether to call it high or low land. The hills are mulatto also, but
whitish, occasioned by the quantity of chalk which seems to
constitute their universal base. They are poor, and principally in
vines. The streams of water are of the color of milk, occasioned by
the chalk also. No inclosures, some flocks of sheep; children
gathering dung in the roads. Here and there a chateau; but none
considerable.
April 22d. Epernay. The hills abound with chalk. Of this
they make lime, not so strong as stone lime, and therefore to be used
in greater proportion. They cut the blocks into regular forms also,
like stone, and build houses of it. The common earth too, well
impregnated with this, is made into mortar, moulded in the form of
brick, dried in the sun, and houses built of them which last one
hundred or two hundred years. The plains here are a mile wide, red,
good, in corn, clover, Luzerne, St. Foin. The hills are in vines,
and this being precisely the canton where the most celebrated wines
of Champagne are made, details must be entered into. Remember,
however, that they will always relate to the white wines, unless
where the red are expressly mentioned. The reason is that their red
wines, though much esteemed on the spot, are by no means esteemed
elsewhere equally with their white; nor do they merit equal esteem.
A Topographical sketch of the position of the wine villages,
the course of the hills, and consequently the aspect of the
vine-yards.
Soil, meagre, mulatto clay, mixed with small broken stone,
and a little hue of chalk. Very dry.
Aspect, may be better seen by the annexed diagram. The
xxx
wine of Aij is made from a to b, those of Dizy from b to
c, Auvillij d to e, Cumieres e to f, Epernay g to h,
Perij i to k. The hills are generally about two hundred and
fifty feet high. The good wine is made only in the middle region.
The lower region, however, is better than the upper; because this
last is exposed to cold winds, and a colder atmosphere.
Culture. The vines are planted two feet apart. Afterwards
they are multiplied (provignes). When a stock puts out two shoots
they lay them down, spread them open and cover them with earth, so as
to have in the end about a plant for every square foot. For
performing this operation they have a hook, of this shape,
(illustration omitted) and nine inches long, which, being stuck in
the ground, holds down the main stock, while the laborer separates
and covers the new shoot. They leave two buds above the ground.
When the vine has shot up high enough, they stick it with split
sticks of oak, from an inch to an inch and a half square, and four
feet long, and tie the vine to its stick with straw. These sticks
cost two florins the hundred, and will last forty years. An arpent,
one year with another, in the fine vineyards, gives twelve pieces,
and in the inferior vineyards twenty-five pieces, of two hundred
bottles each. An arpent of the first quality sells for three
thousand florins, and there have been instances of seven thousand two
hundred florins. The arpent contains one hundred verges, of
twenty-two pieds square. The arpent of inferior quality sells at one
thousand florins. They plant the vines in a hole about a foot deep,
and fill that hole with good mould, to make the plant take.
Otherwise it would perish. Afterwards, if ever they put dung, it is
very little. During wheat harvest there is a month or six weeks that
nothing is done in the vineyard, that is to say, from the 1st of
August to the beginning of vintage. The vintage commences early in
September, and lasts a month. A day's work of a laborer in the
busiest season is twenty sous, and he feeds himself: in the least
busy season it is fifteen sous. Corn lands are rented from four
florins to twenty-four; but vine lands are never rented. The three
fasons (or workings) of an arpent cost fifteen florins. The whole
year's expense of an arpent is worth one hundred florins.
Grapes. -- The bulk of their grapes are purple, which they
prefer for making even white wine. They press them very lightly,
without treading or permitting them to ferment at all, for about an
hour; so that it is the beginning of the running only which makes the
bright wine. What follows the beginning is of a straw color, and
therefore not placed on a level with the first. The last part of the
juice, produced by strong pressure, is red and ordinary. They choose
the bunches with as much care, to make wine of the very first
quality, as if to eat. Not above one-eighth of the whole grapes will
do for this purpose. The white grape, though not so fine for wine as
the red, when the red can be produced, and more liable to rot in a
moist season, yet grows better if the soil be excessively poor, and
therefore in such a soil is preferred, or rather, is used of
necessity, because there the red would not grow at all.
Wine. -- The white wines are either mousseux, sparkling, or
non-mousseux, still. The sparkling are little drunk in France, but
are almost alone known and drunk in foreign countries. This makes so
great a demand, and so certain a one, that it is the dearest by about
an eighth, and therefore they endeavor to make all sparkling if they
can. This is done by bottling in the spring, from the beginning of
March till June. If it succeeds, they lose abundance of bottles,
from one-tenth to one-third. This is another cause increasing the
price. To make the still wine, they bottle in September. This is
only done when they know from some circumstance that the wine will
not be sparkling. So if the spring bottling fails to make a
sparkling wine, they decant it into other bottles in the fall, and it
then makes the very best still wine. In this operation, it loses
from one-tenth to one-twentieth by sediment. They let it stand in
the bottles in this case forty-eight hours, with only a napkin spread
over their mouths, but no cork. The best sparkling wine, decanted in
this manner, makes the best still wine, and which will keep much
longer than that originally made still by being bottled in September.
The sparkling wines lose their briskness the older they are, but they
gain in quality with age to a certain length. These wines are in
perfection from two to ten years old, and will even be very good to
fifteen. 1766 was the best year ever known. 1775 and 1776 next to
that. 1783 is the last good year, and that not to be compared with
those. These wines stand icing very well.
Aij. M. Dorsay makes one thousand and one hundred pieces,
which sell, as soon as made, at three hundred florins, and in good
years four hundred florins, in the cask. I paid in his cellar, to M.
Louis, his homme d'affaires, for the remains of the year 1783, three
florins ten sous the bottle. Sparkling Champagne, of the same degree
of excellence, would have cost four florins, (the piece and demiqueue
are the same; the feuillette is one hundred bottles.) M. le Duc makes
four hundred to five hundred pieces. M. de Villermont, three hundred
pieces. M. Janson, two hundred and fifty pieces. All of the first
quality, red and white in equal quantities.
Auvillaij. The Benedictine monks make one thousand pieces,
red and white, but three-fourths red, both of the first quality. The
king's table is supplied by them. This enables them to sell at five
hundred and fifty florins the piece. Though their white is hardly as
good as Dorsay's, their red is the best. L'Abbatiale, belonging to
the bishop of the place, makes one thousand to twelve hundred pieces,
red and white, three-fourths red, at four hundred to five hundred and
fifty florins, because neighbors to the monks.
Cumieres is all of the second quality, both red and white, at
one hundred and fifty to two hundred florins the piece.
Epernay. Madame Jermont makes two hundred pieces at three
hundred florins. M. Patelaine, one hundred and fifty pieces. M.
Mare, two hundred pieces. M. Chertems, sixty pieces. M. Lauchay,
fifty pieces. M. Cousin (Aubergiste de l'hotel de Rohan a Epernay),
one hundred pieces. M. Pierrot, one hundred pieces. Les Chanoines
regulieres d'Epernay, two hundred pieces. Mesdames les Ursulines
religieuses, one hundred pieces. M. Gilette, two hundred pieces.
All of the first quality; red and white in equal quantities.
Pierrij. M. Casotte makes five hundred pieces. M. de la
Motte, three hundred pieces. M. de Failli, three hundred pieces. I
tasted his wine of 1779, one of the good years. It was fine, though
not equal to that of M. Dorsay, of 1783. He sells it at two florins
ten sous to merchants, and three florins to individuals. Les
Seminaristes, one hundred and fifty pieces. M. Hoquart, two hundred
pieces. All of the first quality; white and red in equal quantities.
At Cramont, also, there are some wines of the first quality
made. At Avisi also, and Aucy, Le Meni, Mareuil, Verzis-Verzenni.
This last place belongs to the Marquis de Sillery. The wines are
carried to Sillery, and there stored, whence they are calle...
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