that this beverage was sent away from the localities
where it was made; for, besides the fact that the "Menagier" only very
curtly mentions a drink made of apples, we know that in the fifteenth
century the Parisians were satisfied with pouring water on apples, and
steeping them, so as to extract a sort of half-sour, half-sweet drink
called _depense_. Besides this, Paulmier de Grandmesnil, a Norman by
birth, a famous doctor, and the author of a Latin treatise on wine and
cider (1588), asserts that half a century before, cider was very scarce at
Rouen, and that in all the districts of Caux the people only drank beer.
Duperron adds that the Normans brought cider from Biscay, when their crops
of apples failed.

By whom and at what period the vine was naturalised in Gaul has been a
long-disputed question, which, in spite of the most careful research,
remains unsolved. The most plausible opinion is that which attributes the
honour of having imported the vine to the Phoenician colony who founded
Marseilles.

Pliny makes mention of several wines of the Gauls as being highly
esteemed. He nevertheless reproaches the vine-growers of Marseilles,
Beziers, and Narbonne with doctoring their wines, and with infusing
various drugs into them, which rendered them disagreeable and even
unwholesome (Fig. 106). Dioscorides, however, approved of the custom in
use among the Allobroges, of mixing resin with their wines to preserve
them and prevent them from turning sour, as the temperature of their
country was not warm enough thoroughly to ripen the grape.

Rooted up by order of Domitian in 92, as stated above, the vine only
reappeared in Gaul under Protus, who revoked, in 282, the imperial edict
of his predecessor; after which period the Gallic wines soon recovered
their ancient celebrity. Under the dominion of the Franks, who held wine
in great favour, vineyard property was one of those which the barbaric
laws protected with the greatest care. We find in the code of the Salians
and in that of the Visigoths very severe penalties for uprooting a vine or
stealing a bunch of grapes. The cultivation of the vine became general,
and kings themselves planted them, even in the gardens of their city
palaces. In 1160, there was still in Paris, near the Louvre, a vineyard of
such an extent, that Louis VII. could annually present six hogsheads of
wine made from it to the rector of St. Nicholas. Philip Augustus possessed
about twenty vineyards of excell