We had been told by Madame the way we should go, and we walked in it with alacrity, especially when it involved leaving the white, sandy high-road, and crossing a vineyard, the property of our amiable hostess. It was the first time that we had been let loose on grapes in this fashion, and we fell upon them with an incredulous delight, that was scarcely checked by the hideous discovery made at this period, that the dog and the monkey had followed us. The monkey was chained to the dog’s collar,--that was always something,--but it was none the less disturbing to see suddenly, while stooping to cut one of the long blue bunches, the little black face with its blinking eyes looking greedily and cunningly through the leaves, and the nimble clammy claw extended imperiously for the grapes that we were afraid to refuse. They were delicious grapes--small and sweet and ‘inconvayniently crowded’ with juice, as a certain Irish wood was reputed to be with woodcock, and so tightly packed on their stalks that it was difficult to pick the first one of the bunch. We, however, overcame this difficulty nobly. Our arrival at the village of St. Lambert was attended with considerable pomp. The procession was headed by the proprietor, who had overtaken us on his tricycle, and now rode very slowly and majestically before us, eating grapes; next came César, the dog, bestridden by the monkey (also eating grapes), and thereby inspiring the most agonising panic in all other dogs along the road; then we came, carrying the Kodak, and bending under bunches of grapes; and after us an enthusiastic body, composed of the infant population of St. Lambert, announcing in clear tones, to all whom it might concern, that ‘These’--meaning us--were ‘_des étrangères_.’ The procession was halted about halfway through the straggling village; the tricycle turned up a side street, and the next moment we had our first sight of wine-making. There was an archway in one of the long white houses, an archway of a shape that we knew very well before we left the Médoc. It was a kind of large window in the wall, about four feet from the ground, with a heap of brown and bare grape stalks outside it, and, looking in, we saw in full swing the working of one of the oldest trades in the world. It must be admitted that we found it startling. In the mouth of the archway was a broad and shallow wooden receptacle, called the _pressoir_; heaped up in it were mounds of grapes, all black and shining, with their splendid indigo bloom gone for ever, and, splashing about amongst them, barefooted, and ankle-deep in the thick magenta juice, were the treaders of the winepress. It was those bare feet, crimsoned with juice, that took our whole attention for the first few minutes. We had been given uncertain warnings as to what we might or might not see, but we had always hoped against [Illustration: A TREADER OF THE WINEPRESS.]