In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for days among the vineyards around; and utterly unknown and unfriended as I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment, half shooting-coat half dressing-gown, would come up courteously to the stranger, and learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage, would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible the _rationale_ of all the operations. Often I was invited into the château or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened, thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires, and beauffets, its quaintly-panneled walls, and its polished floors, gleaming like mirrors, and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the conversation would often turn on the rejection, by England, of French wines—a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in defense either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with illustrations from the _Tour de Nesle_ for the general kitchen and parlor of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney corner—a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood logs—listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day’s work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine. I never benefited very much, however, by these listenings. It was my bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend—to pick up, at the hands of my _compotatores_, neither local trait nor anecdote. The conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place—the prospects of the vintage—elaborate comparisons of it with other vintages—births, marriages, and deaths—a minute list of scandal, more or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions—were the staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighboring proprietors to their vintagers—giving them for breakfast nothing but coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for dinner not much more tempting dishes.