'Sire,' said the president of a deputation bringing specimens of the various productions of Reims to the Grand Monarque when he visited the city in 1666, 'we offer you our wine, our pears, our gingerbread, our biscuits, and our hearts;' and Louis, who was a noted lover of the good things of this life, answered, turning to his suite, 'There, gentlemen, that is just the kind of speech I like.' To this day Reims manufactures by the myriad the crisp finger-shaped sponge-cakes called 'biscuits de Reims,' which the French delight to dip in their wine; juvenile France still eagerly devours its _pain d'épice_, and the city sends forth far and wide the baked pears which have obtained so enviable a reputation. But the production of such wine as that offered to the king has long since almost ceased, while its fame has been eclipsed tenfold by wine of a far more delicious kind, the origin and rise of which has now to be recounted. This is the sparkling wine of Champagne, which has been fitly compared to one of those younger sons of good family, who, after a brilliant and rapid career, achieve a position far eclipsing that of their elder brethren, whose fame becomes merged in theirs.[76] [Illustration] III. /Invention and Development of Sparkling Champagne./ The ancients acquainted with sparkling wines--Tendency of Champagne wines to effervesce noted at an early period--Obscurity enveloping the discovery of what we now know as sparkling Champagne--The Royal Abbey of Hautvillers--Legend of its foundation by St. Nivard and St. Berchier--Its territorial possessions and vineyards--The monks the great viticulturists of the Middle Ages--Dom Perignon--He marries wines differing in character--His discovery of sparkling white wine--He is the first to use corks to bottles--His secret for clearing the wine revealed only to his successors Frère Philippe and Dom Grossart--Result of Dom Perignon's discoveries--The wine of Hautvillers sold at 1000 livres the queue--Dom Perignon's memorial in the Abbey-Church--Wine flavoured with peaches--The effervescence ascribed to drugs, to the period of the moon, and to the action of the sap in the vine--The fame of sparkling wine rapidly spreads--The Vin de Perignon makes its appearance at the Court of the Grand Monarque--Is welcomed by the young courtiers--It figures at the suppers of Anet and Chantilly, and at the orgies of the Temple and the Palais Royal--The rapturous strophes of Chaulieu and Rousseau--Frederick William I. and the Berlin Academicians--Augustus the Strong and the page who pilfered his Champagne--Horror of the old-fashioned _gourmets_ at the innovation--Bertin du Rocheret and the Marshal d'Artagnan--System of wine-making in the Champagne early in the eighteenth century--Bottling of the wine in flasks--Icing Champagne with the corks loosened.