“Aye; but when?—You never will see the dark side of an affair, Antoine. It will be three or four years before yon quagmires can become a firm soil, full of well-settled and bearing vines.” “Meantime, things will become more tranquil at Paris, perhaps, so that people may enjoy their wine as formerly.” “Some persons,” observed Steele, “would repine at the terms we have fixed beyond recall for the produce of Favorite; but I hear no complaints from you of the large profits which will be made by my employers.” “Where would be the use?” replied Antoine. “Since the bargain is, as you say, beyond recall, it is no longer my affair. On the contrary, I congratulate your gentlemen with all my heart.—There is but one thing that I would suggest;—that if their gains prove great, they should purchase the blessing of heaven on them by devoting some small portion to the peasants here who are ruined by the same cause which brings your friends prosperity.” “There will no doubt be a general subscription,” observed Steele; “and it is fitting that those foreigners should give who will profit by the disasters of your country.” “If your gentlemen,” replied Antoine, “will do it in the form of remitting a portion of Favorite’s wealth, they will add grace to their bounty. How graceful will it be in this, our beauty, to thank heaven for having spared her charms by giving in alms a portion of her dowry!” “Will your people distinguish, think you,” asked Steele, laughing, “between alms issuing from an English merchant’s pocket, in his own name and in the name of a personified vineyard?” Antoine warmly replied that no people on earth had so nice a sense of the morally graceful and sublime as the French; and offered a wager that in the straightforward case, plain thanks in prose would be all that Messrs. Mason and Co. would receive; while, if the moral grace he recommended were put into the act, La Haute Favorite would be celebrated in song under many a clump of elms. “Meanwhile,” said Steele, “what measures will you take about your private affairs, and how can I help you?” “I will this day write to Charles tidings of what has happened. To-morrow I will see what portion of the crops out of this enclosure can be saved. The produce must be housed at Bordeaux, and no more transported to Paris this year.—You can aid me no otherwise than in the care of Favorite, and in soothing the poor whom I dread to meet on my way home. Exhort them, as I ever do, to make the best of inevitable evils.” “Your example will do more than my exhortations. But what is left to make the best of?” “The marquis and his daughter. They can no longer be a torment, and may be a help. The new works, for which he oppressed the people, are destroyed. His pigeons are blown away, and his partridges are drowned; and even the frogs may be found to be eternally silenced by this excessive beating of their ponds: while still the people have an equitable claim for food. Let us go and comfort them thus.”