The fame of the new wine, known indifferently as _vin de Perignon_, _flacon pétillant_, _flacon mousseux_, _vin sautant_, _vin mousseux_, _saute bouchon_, &c., and even anathematised as _vin du diable_--for the present term, _vin de Champagne_, was confined as yet to the still or quasi-still growths--quickly spread. Never, indeed, was a discovery more opportune. At the moment of its introduction the glory of France was on the wane; Colbert, Louvois, and Luxembourg were dead; the Treaty of Ryswick had been signed; famine and deficit reared their threatening heads, and lo, Providence offered this new consolation for all outward and inward ills. With the King it could only find scant favour. The once brilliant Louis was now a bigoted and almost isolated invalid. His debilitated stomach, ruined by long indulgence, could scarcely even support the old Burgundy--so old that it was almost tasteless--which Fagon had prescribed as his sole beverage some years before;[114] and the popping of sparkling Champagne corks would have scandalised the quiet _tête-à-tête_ repasts which he was wont to partake of with the pious Madame de Maintenon.[115] [Illustration] [Illustration] But the men who were to be the future _roués_ of the Regency were in the flower of youthful manhood in 1698, and the recommendation of Comus had with them more weight than the warnings of Æsculapius. At the joyous suppers of Anet, where the Duc de Vendôme laid aside the laurels of Mars to wreathe his brows with the ivy of Bacchus; at the Temple, where his brother, the Grand Prior, nightly revived the most scandalous features of the orgies of ancient Rome; at the Palais Royal, where the future Regent was inaugurating that long series of _petits soupers_ which were ultimately to cost the lives of himself and his favourite daughter; and at Chantilly, where the Prince de Conti sought successfully to reproduce a younger and brighter Versailles, the pear-shaped flasks, 'ten inches high, including the four or five of the neck,'[116] stamped with the arms of the noble hosts, and secured with Spanish wax,[117] were an indispensable adjunct to the festivities of the table. A story is told of the Marquis de Sillery, who had turned his sword into a pruning-knife, and applied himself to the cultivation of the paternal vineyards, having first introduced the sparkling wine bearing his name at one of the Anet suppers, when, at a given signal, a dozen of blooming young damsels, scantily draped in the guise of Bacchanals, entered the room, bearing apparently baskets of flowers in their hands, but which, on being placed before the guests, proved to be flower-enwreathed bottles of the new sparkling wine.[118] If ever a beverage was intended for the pleasures of society, it was certainly this one, which it was said Nature had made especially for the French,[119] who found in its discovery a compensation for the victories of Marlborough.