In a wine country the _vendange_ is certainly the most exciting and merriest season of the year--it is a succession of delightful _fêtes_ in the open air, of repasts amongst the vines and under the shade of the peach-trees, riding-parties in the forest, whose echoes are awakened by the melancholy notes of the horn, water-parties on the lakes, dances in the field and round the wine-press, &c. Every _château_ is full to overflowing in Le Morvan during the month of August,--bands of Parisians, Picards, and Normans, acquaintances scarcely made, friends, friends'-friends, with their wives, children, dogs, nurses, and luggage arrive each hour and by every road. Every family is invaded, beds are doubled, plates are not to be found,--there is only one glass for two, one knife for three; the servants, stupified and astonished, know not how to reply or which way to turn themselves; the cooks, half-roasted and lost amidst an army of sauce-pans, know not what they are doing; they put mustard into the _méringues_, cruets of vinegar in the soup--every one is on the laugh, except however the heads of families, who rendered almost crazy by this tide of human beings always rising, by the bell of the _porte cochère_ always ringing, pass on from one to the other the new arrivals, with a note as follows: "Mons. de G.... presents his compliments to Mons. de V...., and has the honour to inform him that not possessing in his house one bed or one arm-chair that is not occupied, he has the pleasure of sending him two Normans and three Parisians." P.S. "The two Normans are first-rate waltzers, the Parisians perfect singers." The reply will perhaps be couched in the following strain: "Mons. de V.... presents his compliments to Mons. de G...., and has the honour to inform him that being himself under the necessity of sleeping in his cellar, he cannot, though most anxious to oblige him, receive the two Norman dancers and the three Parisian warblers." Thus it sometimes happens that very charming, elegant, and sensitive gentlemen, who under ordinary circumstances would be very difficult to please, are obliged to sleep in a barn or loft, on a very nice bed of clean straw, with a dark lantern to light them there, and the luxury of a truss of hay for a pillow. The peasants, generally speaking, do not witness the arrival of these visitors with much pleasure,--the dandies more especially, who shod in varnished leather, always over-dressed, musked, and starched, attract, so they think, too much the attention of the young girls. Fathers, mothers, and, above all, lovers, are at once on the look out. They mistrust these fine gentlemen, whom they always designate by the appellation of "gilded serpents."