were gathering the grapes on a slope almost as steep as a house roof,
father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, big boy, and big girl all silently
busy together. There were bees and wasps humming around the tubs of
crushed grapes in the pale afternoon sun; the view of the lake and the
mountains was inspiring; but there was nothing bacchanalian in the
affair, unless the thick calves of the girl, as she bent over to cut the
clusters, suggested a Maenad fury. These poor people were quite songless,
though I am bound to say that in another vineyard I did hear some of the
children singing. It had momentarily stopped raining; but it soon began
again, and the vintage went sorrowfully on in the mud. All Villeneuve
smelt of the harsh juice and pulp arriving from the fields in the
wagons, carts, tubs, and barrels which crowded the streets and
sidewalks, and in divers cavernous basements the presses were at work,
and there was a slop and drip of new wine everywhere. After dark the
people came in from the fields and gossiped about their doors, and the
red light of flitting lanterns blotched the steady rainpour. Outside of
the village rose the black mountains, white at the top with their snows.

[Illustration: _The Wine-press_]

In the cafes and other public places there were placards advertising
American wine-presses, but I saw none of them in use. At a farm-house
near us we looked on at the use of one of the old-fashioned Swiss
presses. Under it lay a mighty cake of grapes, stems, and skins, crushed
into a common mass, and bulging farther beyond the press with each turn
of the screw, while the juice ran in a little rivulet into a tub below.
When the press was lifted, the grapes were seen only half crushed. Two
peasants then mounted the cake, and trimmed it into shape with
long-handled spades, piling the trimmings on top, and then bringing the
press down again. They invited us with charming politeness to taste the
juice, but their heavy boots bore evidence of too recent a visit to the
cherished manure heap, and we thanked them with equal courtesy.

This grape cake, when it had yielded up its last drop, would be broken
to pieces and scattered over the fields as a fertilizer. The juice would
meanwhile have been placed to ferment in the tuns, twelve and thirteen
feet deep, which lay in the adjoining cellar.

For weeks after the vintage people were drinking the new wine, which
looked thick and whitish in the glasses, at all the cafes. It