Champagne and brandy,'[249] was prepared to defy an army; and he tells us that at Tortoni's there was a room set apart for such quarrelsome gentlemen, where, after these meetings, they indulged in riotous Champagne breakfasts.[250] At home, the British Government were being twitted on their parsimony in limiting the supply of Champagne for the table of the exiled Emperor at St. Helena to a single bottle per diem, a circumstance which led Sir Walter Scott to protest against the conduct of Lord Bathurst and Sir Hudson Lowe in denying the captive 'even the solace of intoxication.' As is not unfrequently the case, out of evil came good. The assembled nations had drunk of a charmed fountain, and it had excited a thirst which could not be quenched. The Russians had become acquainted with Champagne, which Talleyrand had styled '_le vin civilisateur par excellence_,' and to love this wine was with them a very decided step towards a liberal education. Millions of bottles, specially fortified to the pitch of strength and sweetness suited for a hyperborean climate, were annually despatched to the great northern empire from the house of Clicquot; and later on the travellers of rival firms, eager to secure a portion of this patronage, traversed the dominions of the autocrat throughout their length and breadth, and poured their wines in wanton profusion down the throats of one and all of those from whom there appeared a prospect of securing custom. [Illustration] From this influx of sparkling wine into the frozen empire of the Czar the acceptance of civilisation--of rather a superficial character, it is true--may be said to date. Had Peter the Great only preferred Champagne to corn-brandy, the country would have been Europeanised long ago. As it is, the wine has to-day become a recognised necessity in higher class Russian society, and scandal even asserts that whenever it is given at a dinner-party, the host is careful to throw the windows open, in order that the popping of the corks may announce the fact to his neighbours. Abroad the Russians are more reserved in their manners; and though ranking amongst the best customers of the Parisian _restaurateurs_ for high-class wines, it is only now and then that some excited Calmuck is to be seen flooding the glasses of his companions with Champagne in a public dining-room. The Russians, it should be noted, have sought, and not unsuccessfully, to produce sparkling wines of their own, more especially in the country of the Don Cossacks and near the Axis. [Illustration]