hope for _sabots_. I think the proprietor felt for us--not sympathetically, of course, but compassionately. He hastened to explain that the fermenting process purified everything; the old plan had been for the men to join hands and dance round and round the _pressoir_, trampling the juice out of the grapes, and singing a little sacrificial vintage song, but now nothing like that obtained. All this was very consoling and nice, but it did not in the least mitigate the horror that fate had in store for us. We had watched the carts unloading the big _douilles_ packed with grapes at the mouth of the archway, and had heard, and straightway forgotten, how many _douilles_ were yielded by an acre. We had seen with considerable repugnance the wiry and handsome little blue-clad workmen scrub the berries from the stems on the _grillage_, a raised grating that let the bruised grapes fall through, while the stalks remained on the top. We had watched them shovel the grapes in dripping shovelfuls into a small double-handled barrel, which was then snatched up by two of them, who, with it on their shoulders, would trot across the dusty floor of the _cuvier_, up two ladders that leaned side by side against a tall vat, and, having emptied their load into this immense maw, would trot back, and jump into the _pressoir_ again. Through all these things we clung to the beautiful, purifying thought of the fermentation, and said to each other that when we ordered our bottle of Grand St. Lambert at our English hotel we should see that we got it, and would think fondly as we drank it of that good, comforting process. At this juncture one of the barefooted and blue-clad workmen approached with a small tumbler in his singularly dirty hand. ‘These ladies would like to taste the _moût_,’ he observed, dipping the tumbler in a tub half full of the muddy juice that was trickling out of the _pressoir_. He proffered us the tumbler with a bow, and we looked at each other in speechless horror. [Illustration: TASTING THE MOÛT.]