Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at its feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam Tonsard reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays a great part in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers and wine-dealers, and wherever a drinking-shop exists.This precious liquor, made of choice wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is preferable to all those disguises or mixtures of brandy called ratafia, one-hundred-and-seven, brave man's cordial, black currant wine, vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc.Boiled wine is found throughout France and Switzerland.Among the Jura, and in the wild districts trodden only by a few special tourists, the innkeepers call it, on the word of commercial travellers, the wine of Syracuse.Excellent it is, however, and their guests, hungry as hounds after ascending the surrounding peaks, very gladly pay three and four francs a bottle for it.In the homes of the Morvan and in Burgundy the least illness or the slightest agitation of the nerves is an excuse for boiled wine.
Before and after childbirth the women take it with the addition of burnt sugar.Boiled wine has soaked up the property of many a peasant, and more than once the seductive liquid has been the cause of marital chastisement.
"Ha! there's no chance of grabbing that secret," replied Fourchon, "Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never told how he does it to his late wife.He sends to Paris for his materials."
"Don't plague your father," cried Tonsard; "doesn't he know? well, then, he doesn't know! People can't know everything!"
Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law's countenance softened as well as his words.
"What do you want to rob me of now?" he asked, candidly.
"I?" said Tonsard, "I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get anything from you it is in payment of your daughter's portion, which you promised me and never paid."
Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head on his breast as though vanquished and convinced.
"Look at that pretty snare," resumed Tonsard, coming up to his father-
in-law and laying the trap upon his knee."Some of these days they'll want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own, or there will be no good God for the poor folks."
"A fine piece of work," said the old man, examining the mischievous machine.
"It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa," said Mam Tonsard, "but you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues."
"Oh, what chatterers women are!" cried Tonsard."If I am hanged it won't be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue."
"And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in lots for your pitiful benefit?" asked Fourchon."Pshaw! haven't you discovered in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking the marrow out of your bones that the middle-class folks are worse than the lords? Mark my words, when that affair happens, my children, the Soudrys, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, will make you kick your heels in the air.'I've the good tobacco, it never shall be thine,' that's the national air of the rich man, hey? The peasant will always be the peasant.Don't you see (but you never did understand anything of politics!) that government puts such heavy taxes on wine only to hinder our profits and keep us poor? The middle classes and the government, they are all one.What would become of them if everybody was rich? Could they till their fields? Would they gather the harvest?
No, they WANT the poor! I was rich for ten years and I know what I thought of paupers."
"Must hunt with them, though," replied Tonsard, "because they mean to cut up the great estates; after that's done, we can turn against them.
If I'd been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I'd have long ago paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow gives him."
"Right enough, too," replied Fourchon."As Pere Niseron says (and he stayed republican long after everybody else), 'The people are tough;
they don't die; they have time before them.'"
Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the old man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was always kept damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their glasses.Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps, have felt the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that moment.
"Tonsard, do you know where you father is?" called that functionary from the foot of the steps.
Vermichel's shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old Fourchon's glass, were simultaneous.
"Present, captain!" cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to help him up the steps.
Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most Burgundian.The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet.His face, like certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and there, with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish patches which Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the "flowers of wine." This fiery face, the features of which were swelled out of shape by continual drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on the right side by a gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a yellow patch over the left orb.Red hair, always tousled, and a beard like that of Judas, made Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality.His prominent nose looked like an interrogation-