… And the next place we came to was Bergerac," said he, after ten minutes of it.
"Ah!" I murmured. "Bergerac!"
"You know it?"
"Passably well," said I. "It lies toward the edge of the claret country; but it grows astonishing claret. When I was about your age it grew a wine yet more astonishing."
"Hallo!" Master Dick paused in the act of lighting his pipe and dropped the match hurriedly as the flame scorched his fingers.
"It was grown on a hill just outside the town—the Mont-Bazillac. I once drank a bottle of it."
"Lord! You too? … Do tell me what happened!"
"Never," I responded firmly. "The Mont-Bazillac is extinct, swept out of existence by the phylloxera when you were a babe in arms. Infandum jubes renovare— no one any longer can tell you what that wine was. They made it of the ripe grape. It had the raisin flavour with something—no more than a hint—of Madeira in it: the leathery tang—how to describe it?"
"You need not try, when I have two bottles of it at home, at this moment!"
"When I tell you—" I began.
"Oh, but wait till you've heard the story!" he interrupted. "As I was saying, we came to Bergerac and put up for the night at the Couronne d'Or—first-class cooking. Besides ourselves there were three French bagmen at the table d'hote. The usual sort. Jinks, who talks worse French than I do (if that's possible), and doesn't mind, got on terms with them at once. … For my part I can always hit it off with a commercial—it's the sort of mind that appeals to me—and these French bagmen do know something about eating and drinking. That's how it happened. One of them started chaffing us about the ordinaire we were drinking—quite a respectable tap, by the way. He had heard that Englishmen drank only the strongest wine, and drank it in any quantities. Then another said: 'Ah, messieurs, if you would drink for the honour of England, justement you should match yourselves here in this town against the famous Mont-Bazillac.' 'What is this Mont-Bazillac?' we asked: and they told us—well, pretty much what you told me just now—adding, however, that the landlord kept a few precious bottles of it. They were quite fair in their warnings."
"Which, of course, you disregarded."
"For the honour of England. We rang for the landlord—a decent fellow, Sebillot by name—and at first, I may tell you, he wasn't at all keen on producing the stuff; kept protesting that he had but a small half-dozen left, that his daughter was to be married in the autumn, and he had meant to keep it for the wedding banquet. However, the bagmen helping, we persuaded him to bring up two bottles. A frantic price it was, too—frantic for us. Seven francs a bottle."
"It was four francs fifty even in my time."
"The two bottles were opened. Jinks took his, and I took mine. We had each arrosed the dinner with about a pint of Bordeaux; nothing to count. We looked at each other straight. I said, 'Be a man, Jinks! A votre sante messieurs!' and we started. … As you said just now, it's a most innocent-tasting wine."
"As a matter of fact, I didn't say so. Still, you are right."
"The fourth and fifth glasses, too, seemed to have no more kick in them than the first. … Nothing much seemed to be happening, except that Sebillot had brought in an extra lamp—at any rate, the room was brighter, and I could see the bagmen's faces more distinctly as they smiled and congratulated us. I drank off the last glass 'to the honour of England,' and suggested to Jinks—who had kept pace with me, glass for glass—that we should take a stroll and view the town. There was a fair (as I had heard) across the bridge. … We stood up together. I had been feeling nervous about Jinks, and it came as a relief to find that he was every bit as steady on his legs as I was. We said good evening to the bagmen and walked out into the street. 'Up the hill or down?' asked Jinks, and I explained to him very clearly that, since rivers followed the bottoms of their valleys, we should be safe in going downhill if we wanted to find the bridge. And I'd scarcely said the words before it flashed across me that I was drunk as Chloe.
"Here's another thing.—I'd never been drunk before, and I haven't been drunk since: but all the same I knew that this wasn't the least like ordinary drunkenness: it was too—what shall I say?—too brilliant. The whole town of Bergerac belonged to me: and, what was better, it was lit so that I could steer my way perfectly, although the street seemed to be quite amazingly full of people, jostling and chattering. I turned to call Jinks's attention to this, and was saying something about a French crowd—how much cheerfuller it was than your average English one—when all of a sudden Jinks wasn't there! No, nor the crowd! I was alone on Bergerac bridge, and I leaned with both elbows on the parapet and gazed at the Dordogne flowing beneath the moon.
"It was not an ordinary river, for it ran straight up into the sky: and the moon, unlike ordinary moons, kept whizzing on an axis like a Catherine-wheel, and swelled every now and then and burst into showers of the most dazzling fireworks. I leaned there and stared at the performance, feeling just like a king—proud, you understand, but with a sort of noble melancholy. I knew all the time that I was drunk; but that didn't seem to matter. The bagmen had told me—"
I nodded again.
"That's one of the extraordinary things about the Mont-Bazillac," I corroborated. "It's all over in about an hour, and there's not (as the saying goes) a headache in a hogshead."
"I wouldn't quite say that," said Dick reflectively. "But you're partly right. All of a sudden the moon stopped whizzing, the river lay down in its bed, and my head became clear as a bell. 'The trouble will be,' I told myself, 'to find the hotel again.' But I had no trouble at all. My brain picked up bearing after bearing. I worked back up the street like a prize Baden-Powell scout, found the portico, remembered the stairway to the left, leading to the lounge, went up it, and recognising the familiar furniture, dropped into an armchair with a happy sigh. My only worry, as I picked up a copy of the Gil Blas and began to study it, was about Jinks. But, you see, there wasn't much call to go searching after him when my own experience told me it would be all right.
"There were, maybe, half a dozen men in the lounge, scattered about in the armchairs and smoking. By and by, glancing up from my newspaper, I noticed that two or three had their eyes fixed on me pretty curiously. One of them—an old boy with a grizzled moustache—set down his paper, and came slowly across the room. 'Pardon, monsieur,' he said in the politest way, 'but have we the honour of numbering you amongst our members?' 'Good Lord!' cried I, sitting up, 'isn't this the Couronne d'Or?' 'Pray let monsieur not discommode himself,' said he, with a quick no-offence sort of smile, 'but he has made a little mistake. This is the Cercle Militaire.'
"I must say those French officers were jolly decent about it: especially when I explained about the Mont-Bazillac. They saw me back to the hotel in a body; and as we turned in at the porchway, who should come down the street but Jinks, striding elbows to side, like a man in a London-to-Brighton walking competition! … He told me, as we found our bedrooms, that 'of course, he had gone up the hill, and that the view had been magnificent.' I did not argue about it, luckily: for—here comes in another queer fact—there was no moon at all that night. Next morning I wheedled two more bottles of the stuff out of old Sebillot—which leaves him two for the wedding. I thought that you and I might have some fun with them. … Now tell me your experience."
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