As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my first initiation into the plucking of the grapes. But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one. There are no idle spectators at a vintage--all the world must work; and so I speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed by a fat old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration--with a huge pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches, in the midst of an uproarious troop of young men, young women, and children--threading the avenues between the plants--stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered branches--their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow serpents among the broad green leaves--and sometimes shouting out merry badinage, sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all the time, as far as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls. The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more laughing about nothing in particular, more open and unblushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing of the good man, whose grapes were going partly into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the children and old people out of the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and partly into the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I was dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen, eschewing the under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her woolly hair and very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut away," she said; "every grape makes wine." "Yes--but the caterpillars--" "They give it a body." "Yes--but the snails--" "O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a little girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells. "What do you do with them?" I inquired. "Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend. I looked askance. "You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!" said the mulatto girl. I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and said nothing; but added my mite of snail-flesh to the collection.