The sitting-room in our hotel at Pauillac was discovered and annexed by us on the afternoon of our first day in the MÉdoc. It was a large room and a pleasant, and, so far as we were aware, had never before been trodden by the foot of man; certainly none trod it once we had taken possession. The sandy bootmarks that we distributed about its polished red floor remained there during the whole of our stay at Pauillac undisturbed by a brush, and unmingled with the footprint of the nÉgociant en vins. The two big plaited maize-straw arm-chairs stood at attention by the table just as they were left; and, most wonderful of all, we could open the windows and know they would not be shut the moment our backs were turned. Apparently the other people in the hotel had no time to spend in the sitting-room. The wine merchants went forth in loud companies every morning, but—like the Irish lady who was said to be ‘the most thronging woman ever you seen; sure, she’d go out o’ the house twenty times for the once she’d come in’—they never seemed to return, and, whatever may have happened to them, the salon remained undisturbedly ours.

It was while sitting at tea at the large admirable table belonging to this room, on the afternoon of our first experience in the cuviers, that we became conscious of the eye of the Kodak regarding us from behind our eighteenpenny teapot with a cold reproach. As yet the gardens on the Thames Embankment reigned in lonely beauty in the recesses of the machinery; nothing French had been given to the mysterious custody of the black box, though we had carried it, at considerable inconvenience, to the cuvier of St. Lambert in the morning. The right moment never seemed to come; the sun was where it ought not to be, or we were afraid that the suitable peasant might be offended, and we had besides a latent disbelief in the Kodak’s willingness to deal with southern sunshine and a foreign sky tingling with light.

‘It has the surly English turn in it somewhere,’ my cousin had said, with Galway arrogance. But it was now saying ‘Ici on parle FranÇais’ with all the power of its sunken eye; and as soon as we had thrown the tea-leaves out of the window, and hidden the jug of cold boiled milk behind the stuffed fox on the side-table, we went down and ordered a wagonette for the next morning from a livery stable, and felt that we were going to do our duty seriously by the Kodak.

The weather certainly did its part of the business to perfection. The sun blazed upon our departure, as we emerged from the hotel in the morning, and the heat came through the cool wind in streaks, as the vanille biscuit intersects the aching monotony of the lemon ice. Under the awning outside the coffee-room windows sat Madame, filling out her straw chair in magnificent meditation. Ours had been the last of the petits dÉjeuners, so that there was no longer any need for her to watch over the expenditure of red embers and cafÉ au lait in the kitchen, and she could now exhibit her elegant leisure and her blue cloth slippers to the loungers of Pauillac for an hour or so. We wished, for her sake, that the wagonette was larger and had two horses, and that the Kodak’s resemblance to a box of ‘samples’ had not given us so much the effect of commercial travellers; but she gave us a ‘bonne promenade,’ and a wave of the hand, that showed she had a heart that did not despise the humble.

Before we had got clear of the town, our cocher had begun to betray symptoms of intelligence. Our directions as to where we wished to go had been but vague, and, twisting himself round on his seat, he cross-questioned us until he had grasped the situation. ‘These demoiselles wished to see vineyards and vintagers at work in them, voyons!’—he twisted up the ends of his little black moustache, and grinned at us with unutterable comprehension, till his fat cheeks must have impeded his vision. ‘And they wish to make the photographie? Eh, bien! It is I who know where to conduct them. Allons, I will make them to see ChÂteau Latour!’ His black eyes beamed delightedly upon us, and his horse crawled unmolested down the hill, while a series of apparently agreeable ideas displayed themselves on its driver’s face. He resumed his usual position on the box, cracked his whip, and frightened the horse into a canter by saying ‘HuË!’ in a soprano voice.

It was very satisfactory. We told each other that we had indeed lighted upon a treasure—a man who understood what photography was, and who seemed to know the sort of things we wanted to photograph. We did not know that his mind was occupied in mapping out conveniently those of his friends whom he wished to visit, to photograph, to impress generally with his position of ‘Cicero’ (as a county Cork paper has classically expressed this office); but we realised all these things afterwards.

We drove for a while through the broad stretches

of the vineyards, where the myriad low vines stood with their octopus arms drooping untidily over the supporting wire, and the grapes hung heavy and ripe, taking their last look of the sun before their plunge into the seething night of the cuves. No one but the ardent nÉgociant en vins could, we think, call the MÉdoc a beautiful land. Even at its gayest and greenest time these long slopes require all the romance and richness and mystery of the grapes to give them an interest, and the much-vaunted fact that the land was annually worth anything from £250 to £800 per acre cannot give it the sympathy that lies in an Irish hillside of furze and rock, whose price is adjusted in shillings and pence by Sub-Commissioners of the Land Court.

The vintage had hardly begun. We had to drive for some distance before we saw the first group of vendangeurs, standing waist-deep in the vines, snipping off the bunches and putting them into square wooden baskets, eating grapes by handfuls, and talking in a penetrating, incessant gabble that was as strident on the quiet vineyard slope as were the dazzling white sun-bonnets and kerchiefs and blue blouses in the toneless expanse of green. The Treasure pulled up, informing us that here was a suitable subject for photography, and we docilely got the Kodak into position. The vintagers turned as one man to stare at us, and we tried to isolate some half-dozen in the little focussing mirror, while the Treasure leaped from his box, and, circulating among the crowd, explained to them his position of proprietor of the entertainment with a sense of its humour that was only kept within bounds by the still stronger sense of self-importance. My cousin balanced the Kodak on her arm with all care, and said, ‘Maintenant trÈs tranquille, s’il vous plaÎt!’ to the mirrored half-dozen, who with one accord shrieked with delight, put their arms round each other, did their hair, and otherwise prepared themselves for the ordeal.

‘How fortunate it is that they don’t object to being photographed!’ said my cousin. ‘Now, you pull the bobbin—I mean the button—and I will press the other thing.’

There followed a disintegrating click from the heart of the Kodak.

‘The photograph is taken,’ said my cousin, not as confidently as could have been wished. ‘What did the book say we were to do next?’

‘Put a penny in the slot,’ I suggested.

‘Idiot!’ replied my cousin, searching in my sketching wallet on the earthquake principle—that is, to go at once to the lowest depths, and then to burst upwards and outwards through all resisting elements. ‘Here is the book! It says we are now to turn this handle and replace the cap.’

The handle was turned, and it was then discovered that the cap was irretrievably lost. It was not on the floor of the wagonette, it was not in our pockets, it was not in the hood of my cousin’s cloak, or in her hand, or anywhere that it might reasonably have been. We said that we would hold a hat over the thing instead, and on going to the front for this purpose I became aware that the black cap was nestling in its usual place in front of the lens. It was one of the bitterest points of the incident that at this moment the group at whom the Kodak’s sightless eye had been directed, advanced upon us to see results, doubtless expecting that each of its six members would receive on the spot a picture on glass with a brass frame.

It was so surpassingly difficult to explain the accident and the general peculiarities of the Kodak, and the disappointment and scorn were so unconcealed when the faltering photographers finally made themselves understood, that as a possible, though doubtful method of consolation, I plunged among the vines and began a pencil sketch of the disappointed ones. In an instant the cocher was at my shoulder, summoning all the others with a wave of his hand to come and see the show. It is scarcely necessary to add that they came, and for the next five minutes I and my models were the centre of a hollow square, which was, so to speak, lined and canopied with billowy vapours of garlic.

The sketch was finished with unexampled speed, and in the teeth of the most scathing criticism, the critics showing an artistic intelligence that was almost unearthly, and for which an experience of the Irish peasant was no sort of preparation. I broke my way forth from the square, amidst shrill bursts of laughter and shrieks of ‘Ciel! Que je suis vilaine!’ ‘Mais regarde moi un peu le chapeau de Jeanne!’ ‘Eh! Dieu! C’est pas moi Ça! Ouf! C’est vilaine!’ and, having collected my cousin from red-handed gluttony in the background, we succeeded in driving away in time to prevent the sketch-book being torn bodily out of my hand.

We ventured after a few minutes to ask the Treasure where he was now taking us, and after a long and meditative grin at each of us in turn, he condescended to tell us that we were going to see the vintagers at their dinner. Almost as he spoke we whirled in at the gate of a big yard, and saw, under a penthouse at the end of it, a kind of school feast going on: rows of tables covered with platters and jugs, and rows of vintagers devouring untold quantities of vintage soup. Our cocher drove straight up to these, and, having whirled showily round, drew up with the air of Napoleon confronting his army, and addressed the meeting. As he progressed with his explanation of our mission we gloomily produced the Kodak, and waited for the outward rush of those who wished to be immortalised: we were becoming alive to the fact that the MÉdoc peasant had not that shrinking from publicity that we had believed. But providentially the succulent soup, with the meat and cabbage and bread floating in it, was too good to be left in a hurry, and at the end of our driver’s address one candidate only came forward, an extremely plump young lady, with an expression of placid self-contentment, and an apron of an infuriated Scotch plaid. The Treasure leaped from his box like an antelope, and, leading her forth to a convenient spot, proceeded to pose her according to his own ideas. After a few experimental positions the inspiration came, and we had the privilege of focussing the fair vendangeuse, standing

placidly heedless of the fact that the Treasure, with his moustache twisted up to his eyes, from the very extremity of gallantry, was posed beside her, with his fat arm round her neck. Thus they were photographed, and as the words ‘C’est fait’ were uttered, the Treasure’s hat was raised with a flourish, and a ponderous kiss was deposited upon the cheek of beauty. There was a roar of delight from the luncheon party under the penthouse; even the photographers so far forgot themselves as to titter sympathetically, and as our cocher whipped up his horse, and swung out of the yard on two wheels, he turned to us and winked with an intimacy that made my cousin take out her most unbecoming pair of spectacles and put them on, in order to sustain the character of the expedition.

After this the events of the day became blended into a monotony of hot green vineyards, with pink and white houses on the hazy horizon; narrow roads, without a fence between their warm yellow gravel and the yellow gravel in which the vines grow; gangs of

vintagers stooping among the plants; fawn-coloured oxen pacing at ease with their loads; the clack and twang of Bordelais tongues; and, most prominent of all ingredients, the heat and the Kodak. Every friend of the cocher was found and photographed, the sketch-book was utilised for those who insisted on an immediate result, and, as the afternoon sun began to drop towards the western uplands, we hoped that we might, in the fulness of time, be permitted to go home. But the Treasure had yet another friend, one who lived still farther away from Pauillac, and it was not till we had driven for half an hour that we saw in front of us the now familiar chai, with its arched opening into the cuvier, and its magenta-legged proprietor standing inside in the juice, shovel in hand. It was becoming too late in the day for the Kodak, and the cocher desired that a sketch should be made of this most particular friend, and also of the friend’s wife, whom, in the twinkling of an eye, he had fetched from her house and placed on the edge of the pressoir in utter absurdity and incongruity. But the artist was too completely subjugated to remonstrate; even when the sketch-book was snatched from her by the cocher and deposited in the vinous fingers of the grape treader with long and loud explanation of every page, she merely sank back in voiceless despair.

We heard without interest or emotion that we were to be driven home by a different and longer way. Our only articulate longing was for tea, but that being a mere vision, as impossible as beautiful, we gradually took refuge in fatalism, telling ourselves that if we got home that night, well and good; if not, we could sleep in the wagonette, waking up obediently at intervals to make moonlight sketches of such of the cocher’s friends as he chose to summon from their beds for the purpose. We were in the act of dividing our last gingerbread, while the cool breath of the MÉdoc evening gave us its first nip, and the vines became fragrant in the dew, and the chorus of cigales in the roadside grass sounded like the rhythmic reeling of line off innumerable trout-rods, when I was thrown violently against my cousin by the collapse of the wagonette on one side, and after an instant of extreme anxiety and discomfort, we found ourselves rolled out in a heap into the vines, with the cigales’ note at our very ears, and the hind wheel of the wagonette finding a bed for itself in the shallow ditch beside us.