As to the relative quality of sixteenth-century wines there are many independent opinions to be had, and they all agree—Italy was first in that, too. Among Italian wines, preëminent was the Lagrime di Christo ("tears of Christ"), concerning which a Dutchman was heard to lament greatly that Christ had not wept in his country; what has just been said concerning the localization of wines should be modified with regard to this kind which was to be found in many Italian inns outside its native Liguria. Second may be counted Montefiascone, with the help, maybe, of its own particular anecdote, which illustrates the second-hand character of travellers' information, since no two versions of the epitaph agree, and yet most accounts read as if the traveller had read the original. The tale is of a bishop who loved wine, was going to Rome, and had a servant whose taste was to be trusted. The bishop sent him in advance to test the wine at each inn and chalk the door-post with "Est" where the wine was good. When the servant arrived at Montefiascone he chalked "Est, Est, Est"; and so thought the bishop, for he drank till he died. And the servant wrote his epitaph. "'Est, Est, Est;' propter nimium Est Dominus meus mortuus est." Drunkenness was infinitely more common than to-day, especially in Germany. Laws had, it is true, been passed, more stringent, during the past century, a result of the victories of the teetotal Turks; but there was no one to enforce them. Every German's conversation was punctuated with "I drink to you" "as regularly as every psalm ends in a 'Gloria,'" says Moryson, and among a number of princes whom he saw at a funeral feast, not one was sober. He queries—what would they have done at a wedding? adding that during the year and a half he spent there, attending churches regularly, he never heard a clergyman say a word against intemperance. The national reputation abroad was to match; even, when once some Germans halted at a village in Spain, there was a riot; the peasants were really afraid, beforehand, that the price of wine would go up! [Illustration: A FAT GERMAN KITCHEN] [Illustration: A LEAN GERMAN KITCHEN]