the temperature to a safe point, a portion of the heated water is taken out and replaced with cold, or, better still, the bottles of the second basket may be prepared by warming, so as to be put in as soon as the first comes out. The expansion of the wine during the heating process tends to force out the cork, but the twine or wire holds it in, and the wine finds a vent between the neck and the cork. During the cooling of the bottles, the volume of the wine having diminished, the corks should be hammered in farther. The tying is taken off, and the wine is put in the cellar, or on the ground floor, or in the second story, in the shade, or in the sun. There is no fear that any of these different modes of keeping it will render it diseased; they will have no influence except on its mode of maturing, on its color, etc. It will always be useful to keep a few bottles of the same kind without heating it, so as to compare it, at long intervals, with what has been heated. The bottle may be kept in an upright position; no mould will form, but perhaps the wine may lose a little of its fineness under such conditions, if the cork gets dry and air is allowed too freely to enter."

M. Pasteur affirms that he has exposed casks of wine thus treated to the open air, on a terrace with

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a northern exposure, from April to December, without any injury resulting.

Wine in cask may be heated by introducing a tin pipe through the bung-hole, which shall descend in coils nearly to the bottom, and return in a straight line, and through this pipe passing steam. If, after being thus once heated, there is such exposure to air, by racking or bottling, for instance, as to admit a fresh introduction of parasites, the disease may again be cured in the same way as at first.

M. Pasteur's theory, or practice rather, is well received in France; so well, in fact, that, though it was first made known in 1865, already, at the time of which I write, others had begun seriously to contest his claims to original discovery. The Vicount de la Vergnette-Lamotte, of Burgundy, insists that it is no other than his own method of storing wine during July and August in a garret, where the temperature might mount to 90° Fahrenheit, but perhaps not higher, while Pasteur heats up to 122° at least. It is said, too, that an unscientific person who lived in the last generation used to heat his wine to preserve it; and in the south of France they have a custom of exposing wine to the rays of the sun on the roof. A valuable invention is always attacked.

M. Pasteur's book has a very full report in favor

of his system, made by a committee of the Wine Merchants' Association of Paris. But all certificates are dispensed with by such a scene as I have described, where the value of the discovery is certified, and the discoverer rewarded by a great round first prize gold medal from Napoleon's hand, and a smile from Eugénie's lips.

CHAPTER X.

RHEIMS.

HE fifteenth day of July, 1867, found me lodged

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at an agreeable little hotel in the old city of Rheims, capital of the ancient province of Champagne, and next door to the great cathedral of coronation fame. I like such kitchens as that of the little hotel, close to the main hall and opening on it, where the cook is always present and ready to receive your orders direct, dressed in fresh white linen, with a white cap on his head, and surrounded by dozens of brilliant copper saucepans, while on the milk-white dresser is piled the provision for the day -chops, steaks, and joints. Such a sight prepares one to be pleased with his dinner in advance. He was as dignified-the white cook in question-as a chemist in his laboratory, and a great deal cleaner.

My old friend F., for ten years our chef de cave in Cincinnati, had returned some two years before with a snug fortune acquired in America, and was living

at his ease in his native Rheims, or trying to do so. I had looked him up the evening of my arrival, and the next morning he called early, and arranged to take me a tour among the estates best worth seeing in the neighborhood. Soon after breakfast we drove out. As we left the town, the broad valley of the limpid and sage-green Marne lay before us, the foreground of the vine-covered hills, or rather mountains, rising with gentle slopes beyond.

"Is the soil of the plain rich?" I asked.

"No; it will bear tolerable crops, but needs enormous manuring. It is of chalk, like the hills; all about here is chalk."

A chalk soil is always pure, owing to its slow decomposition, I suppose. It is also fine. Champagne wine is born on chalk hills, and grows old in chalk cellars. The same formation as that I found at Rheims I had last seen in the form of the white cliffs of Albion, and before then in the South Downs, where the finest of mutton sheep graze on its short grass, and take their quality from its fineness and sweetness. The old rule was in force in the Marne Valley, as elsewhere-poor soil, rich product; great wine in little quantity.

Crossing the river and the level ground of its valley, the road conducted us with an easy rise up the