The Path to Rome | Page 8

what I have here. I have so
many hectolitres of Brule wine which I made myself, and which I know
to be the best wine there is, and I am taking it about to see if I cannot
tame and break these proud fellows who are for ever beating down
prices and mocking me. It is worth eight 'scutcheons the hectolitre, that
is, eight sols the litre; what do I say? it is worth a Louis a cup: but I will
sell it at the price I name, and not a penny less. But whenever I come to
a village the innkeeper begins bargaining and chaffering and offering
six sols and seven sols, and I answer, "Eight sols, take it or leave it",
and when he seems for haggling again I get up and drive away. I know
the worth of my wine, and I will not be beaten down though I have to
go out of Lorraine into the Barrois to sell it.'
So when we caught him up again, as we did shortly after on the road, a
sergeant cried as we passed, 'I will give you seven, seven and a quarter,
seven and a half', and we went on laughing and forgot all about him.
For many days we marched from this place to that place, and fired and
played a confused game in the hot sun till the train of sick horses was a
mile long, and till the recruits were all as deaf as so many posts; and at
last, one evening, we came to a place called Heiltz le Maurupt, which
was like heaven after the hot plain and the dust, and whose inhabitants
are as good and hospitable as Angels; it is just where the Champagne
begins. When we had groomed and watered our horses, and the stable
guard had been set, and we had all an hour or so's leisure to stroll about
in the cool darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a sudden
lesson in the smallness of the world, for what should come up the
village street but that monstrous Barrel, and we could see by its
movements that it was still quite full.
We gathered round the peasant, and told him how grieved we were at
his ill fortune, and agreed with him that all the people of the Barrois
were thieves or madmen not to buy such wine for such a song. He took
his oxen and his barrel to a very high shed that stood by, and there he

told us all his pilgrimage and the many assaults his firmness suffered,
and how he had resisted them all. There was much more anger than
sorrow in his accent, and I could see that he was of the wood from
which tyrants and martyrs are carved. Then suddenly he changed and
became eloquent:
'Oh, the good wine! If only it were known and tasted! ... Here, give me
a cup, and I will ask some of you to taste it, then at least I shall have it
praised as it deserves. And this is the wine I have carried more than a
hundred miles, and everywhere it has been refused!'
There was one guttering candle on a little stool. The roof of the shed
was lost up in the great height of darkness; behind, in the darkness, the
oxen champed away steadily in the manger. The light from the candle
flame lit his face strongly from beneath and marked it with dark
shadows. It flickered on the circle of our faces as we pressed round, and
it came slantwise and waned and disappeared in the immense length of
the Barrel. He stood near the tap with his brows knit as upon some very
important task, and all we, gunners and drivers of the battery, began
unhooking our mugs and passing them to him.
There were nearly a hundred, and he filled them all; not in jollity, but
like a man offering up a solemn sacrifice. We also, entering into his
mood, passed our mugs continually, thanking him in a low tone and
keeping in the main silent. A few linesmen lounged at the door; he
asked for their cups and filled them. He bade them fetch as many of
their comrades as cared to come; and very soon there was a circulating
crowd of men all getting wine of Brule and murmuring their
congratulations, and he was willing enough to go on giving, but we
stopped when we saw fit and the scene ended. I cannot tell what
prodigious measure of wine he gave away to us all that night, but when
he struck the roof of the cask it already sounded hollow. And when we
had made a collection which he had refused, he went to