Wherever the Romans died they left traces behind them in their quaint funeral urns; wherever the civilised man of the nineteenth century has set his foot--at the base of the Pyramids and at the summit of the Cordilleras, in the mangrove swamps of Ashantee and the gulches of the Great Lone Land, in the wilds of the Amoor and on the desert isles of the Pacific--he has left traces of his presence in the shape of the empty bottles that were once full of the sparkling vintage of the Marne. They are strewn broadcast over the face of the globe, literally from Indus to the Pole. The crews of the Alert and the Discovery left them on the ice-bound verge of the paleocrystic sea; the French expeditionary columns have scattered them within the limits of the Great Sahara. In the lodges of the red man they are found playing the part of a great medicine, and in the huts of the negro they assume all the importance due to a big fetish. Stanley, arriving fainting and exhausted at the mouth of the Congo, hailed with joy the foil-tipped flask that the hospitable merchants who answered his appeal for succour had despatched; and as he quaffed its contents, recalled how he and Livingstone, when thousands of miles from any other European, had emptied a bottle of sparkling Champagne together on the night of their memorable meeting at Ujiji. And when, after the battle of Ulundi, the victorious British troops occupied Cetewayo's kraal, they found within the sable potentate's private chamber several empty Champagne bottles, the contents of which, it is to be presumed, he had quaffed the night before to the success of his followers. In the Transvaal too, during the negotiations for an armistice, Sir Evelyn Wood regaled the Boer delegates with Champagne. On a subsequent occasion, the latter were unable to return the compliment, excusing themselves by suggestively remarking, 'We don't take such things with us when we go to fight.'
[Illustration: RENAISSANCE HOUSE AT REIMS, IN WHICH MADAME CLICQUOT RESIDED.]
/Reims and its Champagne Establishments./
The city of Reims--Its historical associations--The Cathedral--Its western front one of the most splendid conceptions of the thirteenth century--The sovereigns crowned within its walls--Present aspect of the ancient archiepiscopal city--The woollen manufactures and other industries of Reims--The city undermined with the cellars of the great Champagne firms--Reims hotels--Gothic house in the Rue du Bourg St. Denis--Renaissance house in the Rue de Vesle--Church of St. Jacques: its gateway and quaint weathercock--The Rue des Tapissiers and the Chapter Court--The long tapers used at religious processions--The Place des Marchés and its ancient houses--The Hôtel de Ville--Statue of Louis XIII.--The Rues de la Prison and du Temple--Messrs. Werlé & Co., successors to the Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin--Their offices and cellars on the site of a former Commanderie of the Templars--Origin of the celebrity of Madame Clicquot's wines--M. Werlé and his son--Remains of the Commanderie--The forty-five cellars of the Clicquot-Werlé establishment--Our tour of inspection through them--Ingenious dosing machine--An explosion and its consequences--M. Werlé's gallery of paintings--Madame Clicquot's Renaissance house and its picturesque bas-reliefs--The Werlé vineyards and vendangeoirs.