In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers--the fixed and the floating population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland, comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking characters. The _gen-d'armerie_ have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a rigid application of the maxim that _la propriété c'est le vol_. Where these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers among them from all parts of France--from the Pyrenees and the Alps--from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief, who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company, and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor. The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as could be conceived; and the majority of the men--tattered, strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous cudgels--were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the night--all together, of course--in out-houses or barns, when the _chef_ can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac--a little town on the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde, and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to London--when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up. They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were. Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party went coolly to sleep--more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination.