THE WOUNDED HAD just left Clochemerle. Mad with rage, Tafardel went to the post office, where he got into direct communication with the local correspondents of the Paris press, who thereupon sent urgent telephone messages to Paris conveying the schoolmaster’s terrible announcements. These appeared, with very little toning down, in the evening papers of the metropolis. The dramatic events at Clochemerle, exaggerated by political feeling, were a terrible shock to the Cabinet and especially to Alexis Luvelat, who had to bear the whole brunt of this affair at the same time that he was shouldering the responsibilities of a Governmental interregnum.
The President of the Council, accompanied by his Minister of Foreign Affairs and an imposing array of technical experts, was then in temporary residence at Geneva, where he was representing France at the Disarmament Conference.
This Conference opened under the most favorable auspices. All the nations, large and small, were united in their desire for disarmament and their conviction that such a step would bring great alleviation to the woes of humanity. All that remained to be done was to reconcile certain inevitably divergent points of view, and then proceed to the drawing up of a scheme which would embrace the whole world.
“We have been the principal maritime nation of the world for several centuries past. Furthermore, we English are the exclusive possessors of half the available colonies in the world, which amounts to saying that we exercise police functions over half the entire globe. There you have the starting point of all disarmament. We are ready to guarantee that our naval tonnage will never be more than double that of the second largest navy in the world. Let us therefore begin by reducing the smaller navies, and the reduction of our own will follow without delay.”
America said:
“We are compelled to interfere in the affairs of Europe, where things are in a bad state owing to excessive armaments, while Europe can obviously not interfere in the affairs of America, where all goes well. Disarmament is thus pre-eminently the concern of Europe, which is not qualified to exercise any supervision over the other continent.” (“And what’s more, those Japanese are a lot of confounded—and dangerous—rascals.” But that was only said in murmurs behind the scenes at the Conference.) “We bring you an American program. The American programs are excellent in every respect, for we are the most prosperous country on earth. However, if you do not accept our program, you may expect to receive our bills.”
Japan said:
“We are ready to disaim, but in our case a ‘coefficient of extension’ should be admitted: and if a comparison is made between ourselves and retrograde peoples, it cannot in all fairness be denied us. We have at the present moment the highest birth rate in the world. And if we do not put things to rights in China, that unhappy country will subside into a state of anarchy, which would be an immense disaster for the whole human race.” (“And what’s more, those Americans are conceited brutes, a low, dishonest lot who should be very closely watched.” But that was only said in murmurs behind the scenes at the Conference.)
Italy said:
“As soon as our strength in armaments has reached parity with that of France, with whom we are on a level as regards population, we shall begin to disarm.” (“And what’s more, those French are hopeless thieves. In days gone by they robbed us of Napoleon. And now they’re robbing us of North Africa. Was it Rome, or was it not, who reduced Carthage?” But that was only said in murmurs behind the scenes at the Conference.)
Switzerland said:
“As we are a neutral country, and never destined to fight at all, we can, of course, arm to any extent we like, and it will make no difference.” (“And what’s more, if disarmament were already an accomplished fact, there would be no Disarmament Conference, and our tourist industry would have something to say about it. And you, gentlemen, would have less frequent occasion to come to Switzerland with all expenses paid.” But that was only said in murmurs behind the scenes at the Conference.)
“Being a neutral country whose neutrality is not respected, we claim the right to arm to the teeth without restriction.”
The small nations of recent formation were the most turbulent, the most obstructive, the loudest in protest:
“We are strongly in favor of disarmament on the part of the nations which are threatening us on every side. But so far as we ourselves are concerned, our first duty is to take reasonable steps for our own self-protection.” (“And what’s more, armaments are very necessary for our State loans, for they ensure our subscribers recovering their money through the armament manufacturers.” But this was only said in murmurs behind the scenes at the Conference.)
In short, all the nations were united in their agreement with a formula which was summed up in the word “Disarm!” And as all the nations had sent their military experts as delegates to Geneva, it occurred to the firms of Krupp and Schneider that this would be a good moment at which to send their best business agents, who would be sure to find opportunities in the hotels of discussing new models and obtaining profitable orders. These agents knew their business from A to Z, and were in possession of reference notes giving detailed information regarding the various statesmen, and their satellites; and they were provided with means of bribery and corruption to an extent sufficient to set the most tender consciences at rest. Moreover, the two agents, feeling the effects of the prevailing atmosphere of pacifism, were driven to conclude that it would be more profitable to go in for disarmament on their own account, in the commercial sphere.
“There’s room for two, my dear colleague,” said the man from Krupp’s. “Don’t you agree?”
“Ja wohl, ja wohl!” Schneider’s agent replied, for the sake of politeness, in the other’s language. “Ich denke so. We are certainly not going to fight at Geneva!”
“Well, then, that’s understood,” Krupp’s agent agreed. “What’s your special line?”
“For 65’s, 75’s, 155’s quick-firing, 270’s, and 380’s, my firm can’t be rivaled,” the Frenchman answered. “And what about yourself?”
“For 88’s, 105’s, 130’s, 210’s, and 420’s, I don’t think your firm stands a chance with ours.”
“That’s agreed, then!”
“Shake hands on it, old man. And look here, to show you that I’m on the level, I don’t mind telling you that Bulgaria and Roumania are intending to improve their light artillery. You can certainly do business with those people. Better be careful about Bulgaria, though, credit’s none too good.”
“I’ll make a note of that. And you might consider Turkey and Italy yourself. I know they’re needing heavy stuff for their fortresses.”
During the preceding forty-eight hours the two agents had already had some useful conversations and handed each other some encouraging checks. The bargainings at the Conference were proceeding less smoothly. But already four or five speeches of superlative excellence had been made, speeches on an exalted plane of thought, and displaying masterly calculation in the matter of producing international effect. The French oration surpassed them all.
During the night of September 19th there arrived at Geneva a dispatch in cipher which related to the stirring events at Clochemerle. As soon as it was decoded, the secretary hastened to the President of the Council’s apartments. The head of the Government read the message through twice, and a third time aloud. He then turned to some of his assistants who were with him:
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed, “my Government may very likely get the sack after a business like this! I shall have to go back to Paris immediately.”
“And what about the Conference, Monsieur le Président?”
“Quite simple. You’ll have to torpedo it. Find some way of doing so, and be quick about it. Disarmament can wait: it’s been waiting fifty thousand years already. But Clochemerle can’t wait, and those fools in Paris will be springing a question in Parliament on me, if I know them at all!”
“Monsieur le Président,” the head of the experts suggested, “there may be some way of meeting the difficulty. Hand over your scheme to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He will protect our national interests, and we will support him to the best of our ability.”
“What a childish suggestion!” the President of the Council said, coldly. “Do you imagine that I’ve sweated for a whole month over my scheme in order to hand it over now to Ran-court, who will simply take the wind out of my sails while I’m away? For an expert, you really have very poor judgment, my good friend!”
“I thought,” the other man stammered out, “that it would be in the interests of France. . . .”
A most unfortunate excuse to offer; and it appeared to give considerable offense to the President of the Council.
“France! I am France—until further notice. Well, gentlemen, please see about returning all those wretched foreigners as gently as you can to their respective countries. We’ll chuck another Conference at their heads in a few months’ time. It’ll mean a nice little stroll for everybody. And now I don’t want to be badgered any more about this Conference business. It’s finished. Oh, just have me put through to Paris—to Luvelat.”
A final objection still remained to be made, and it was put forward by a man who until now had remained silent:
“Are you not afraid, Monsieur le Président, that public opinion may put a bad interpretation on this sudden departure?”
Before replying, the President of the Council put a question to his private secretary:
“What is the total amount at present available in the secret funds?”
“Five million, Monsieur le Président.”
“You hear, Monsieur!” the President of the Council said. “Five million! With that amount, there is no such thing as public opinion. And let me tell you this: the French Press is—cheap. In fact, it’s hardly possible to make a decent living there. I am in a position to know. It was in journalism, Foreign Affairs section, that I began my career. Yes, gentlemen, we can certainly make ourselves scarce. We will disarm some other time. We’ve got to attend to Clochemerle.”
And thus it was that the Disarmament Conference of 1923 came to naught. The destiny of nations hangs indeed by a mere thread. And here we have a fresh instance of that truth. If Adèle Torbayon had been less voluptuous, Tardivaux less enterprising, Arthur Torbayon less easily offended, Foncimagne less fickle, and Putet less malignant, perchance the fate of the world had been other than it is.
Before we say farewell to the Clochemerle of 1923, some account must be given of the close of that day, the 19th of September, which was intensely dramatic.
It was six o’clock in the evening, and an overpowering heat with forebodings of tempest added still further to the uneasiness and nervous distress of the inhabitants of Clochemerle. With great suddenness, the town was swept from end to end by a violent wind, which had all the keenness of the fierce blasts of winter. Three tremendous clouds, racing along the sky like caravels with bulging sails driven headlong by a cyclone, moved forward over the ocean of the heavens. Next there appeared in the west, like some invasion of barbaric hordes, the compact mass of a horrible army of dark cumuli, bearing ruin and devastation with them, and distended by their burdens of lightning, flood, and a deadly artillery of hail. The squadrons of this vast invading host threw a deep shadow upon the face of the earth, and spread over it a pall of silence born of age-old terrors ever ready to spring up once again within the hearts of men, who are but the constant sport and prey of the immortal gods. The mountains of Azergues, which were rapidly becoming lost to view, were rent by the crashing thunder, lacerated by the vivid flashes of the lightning, maimed by giant explosions. And soon the whole heavens were but a vast expanse of ashen pallor, arid, ravaged, desolate: while in their dismal immensity, the fires of hell were kindled, and the stupendous bombardment, let loose by furies superhuman and unseen, rumbled and rolled. In an instant the valleys were filled with water, the hillocks battered down; the horizon was engulfed beneath a tidal wave, and the sinister vanguards of annihilation loomed ahead. From end to end, to its farthest limits, the world was lit up by a blaze of electric fury; the planet quivered and shook upon its axis, and the bowels of the earth, age-old, were stirred to their very depths. Eclipse was universal. Terror reigned supreme. Immense, overwhelming walls of water rolled in on every side, surrounding and isolating Clochemerle as though it were a town accursed, left alone with its own guilty conscience to face the sentence of Divine wrath. Hailstones as large as eggs crashed down in furious onslaught, in a diagonal direction which drove them against the windowpanes, flooding the rooms where the windows were not closed, swamping the barns and cellars, wrenching off shutters and weathercocks, knocking down cheese safes, lifting up stray hens as though they had been dead leaves and dashing them against the walls of the houses.
The roofs of two sheds were carried for a distance of a hundred yards, scattering their tiles like bombs. A chimney suddenly collapsed, like an old man falling dead. Two rushing streams of water, running parallel but meeting at certain points, made havoc in the main street. A cypress in the cemetery burst into flames at the top like a dying candle. The thunder exploded over the summit of the church steeple like bombs from an airplane, threatening to lay low that venerable conglomeration of beams, legend, and antiquity. Then, changing its aim, it directed its volleys over the town hall, twisted the lightning conductor as it might have been a pin, reduced the slates of its Republican roof to dust and scattered them to the winds, singed and roasted its flag despite the cataracts from above, smashed the stone on its frontal on which the word Fraternity was carved, and, on its door, placing a seal of fire upon the wooden frame in which were displayed the futile decrees of mere mortal men, signed by Barthélemy Piéchut. Slightly increasing its range, with a flick of the finger it pulverized Girodot’s brass plate and deposited in front of his office some boxes full of sulphur matches which exploded with much sputtering and crackling, quite enough to give the notary an attack of colic, ready as he was at any moment to take refuge behind the armor plating of his safe, the customary dwelling place of his rascally soul.
Huddled together in the darkest corners of their quaking houses, where they were held prisoners in a state of anguish, repentance and fear, the inhabitants of Clochemerle listened to the rumbling and roaring of the merciless deluge, and the constantly increasing violence of the murderous fire of hailstones which was smashing their windows and cracking their tiles. That did not matter so much: but the storm was breaking down their vines, whittling away the leaves, splitting the juicy grapes, throwing them to the ground, trampling on them, emptying them of their very lifeblood, their precious, scented lifeblood. It was the blood of Clochemerle itself, of the whole town, which was flowing down the slopes, steeping the earth, and mingling with the blood of Tatave and of Adèle, those unlucky victims of envy, stupidity, and hatred. It was the wine of Clochemerle—all of it—that was being changed into flowing streams of water. Overwhelmed, utterly overwhelmed, by this manifestation of Heaven’s wrath, the inhabitants had visions already of a whole town ruined, bled white, with a long year of expiation looming ahead, a year of empty cellars, a year to be spent in the awful depths of utter despair, penniless and poverty-stricken.
“We’re well punished—indeed we are!”
“It’s Saint Roch, sure enough—he’s been looking out for an opportunity.”
“It couldn’t have gone on much longer like that—everyone acting as though they’d gone mad!”
“There was too many shameful things happening for a little town like ours.”
“And now we’ve got to pay for all that beastliness!”
“No respect for anything! That was what did it!”
“We’re well punished! We’re well punished!”
Such were the tales of woe that followed hard on the heels of uncharitable and malicious discourse. Tortured by the pangs of chastisement and retribution, the erring Magdalens were already repenting of their shameful exploits. Children clung to their mothers’ skirts and sobbed bitterly. The dogs, trying to obliterate themselves, slunk nervously away to hiding places, with lowered ears; geese waddled and crawled along on their fat, matronly bellies as though their destruction were already accomplished; hens scattered their excrement over kitchen floors and no one cared. The cats became charged with electricity. They leapt in the air all four feet at once and came down stiffly, bodies arched, fur on end, tails curled, while terrified spectators encountered the sinister glare of their eyes, dim and brilliant in mysterious alternation.
Standing near the windows, the vinegrowers, overwhelmed and distraught, watched the sky for any sign of relief. Their minds dwelt upon all this destruction, this wasted effort; on their, shoulders was the burden of their ancestors who, on those same slopes, had faced in their time the fury of the elements. Over and again they kept saying: “It’s too awful! It’s too awful!”
The rain lasted the whole night and throughout the following day, with a calm but inexorable abundance which washed away the last vestige of any human happiness that the town may have possessed. Not a rainbow appeared, not a ray of sunshine pierced the thick wall of that rain, which was kilometers in depth and had whole rivers in reserve. Clochemerle had been cast into the lowest depths of the world’s dampest dungeons, into the unfathomable oblivion of an eternity of gloom.
At last, on the third morning, like tenors with voices restored, the cocks, with their frills newly starched, as proud of their crests as though decorated with the Legion of Honor lately bestowed, and more like conceited comedians than ever, crowed themselves hoarse with announcements of the dawn of a splendid day.
The horizon was a water color in which varying shades of blue, divinely blended, combined with the fleeting blush pink of emotion to form one delicious whole. The little hills were as sweet to behold as a young maiden’s breasts, the gentle slopes as her hips unveiled. The earth was as it were a young girl of eighteen taken unawares as she steps from her bath, who, not knowing that she is watched, listens obediently to the song of happiness that her own heart is singing, and times her lithe movements to the measure of its refrain. It was the armistice all over again. And for its celebration, the trumpets of light sent forth a clarion note, and the sun, mounting the topmost step of his eastern throne, took possession of his celestial kingdom. A mere movement of his scepter, and enchantment suddenly held sway, glad hopes sprang into being.
But the punishment of the town remained; and severe it was. This warm, smiling renascence of Nature’s beauty only emphasized the grievous havoc that the preceding days had wrought. As far as the eye could reach, the vines were nothing but ruined fragments. When the harvesting came shortly afterwards, all that the people of Clochemerle found to store in their bins were withered bunches of grapes, few and far between, half decayed, from which the juice had fled. Paltry heaps indeed they were that went into the vats—a sorry sight to see. And they yielded but a wretched wine, thin and sour, inferior stuff that might have come from anywhere, a depressing, tasteless concoction from the plains, and, for Beaujolais, a sheer disgrace.
“And unsalable, Heaven help us!”
“And barely drinkable for an honest man, by god it isn’t!”
Never before had the wine of Clochemerle been known to have such a taste, never had there been such a filthy mixture for pouring down the throats of strangers. Never, never!
The most hopeless, the most damnable year of misfortune ever known, was 1923! A perfect bitch of a year—indeed, it was.
The final development of the scandals of Clochemerle took place during the morning of October 16th, a Sunday. The season was still warm and autumn tints prevailed. However, every evening, from six o’clock onwards, little draughts of chilly air gave indication of the imminent arrival of winter. On the lofty summits of the mountains of Azergues, its advance parties were already making an appearance, and setting there, until night gave way to morning, their ambuscades of hoarfrost. The sun, without a blow struck, drove off these brazen invaders from the north, who had come too far, whose adventure was premature, and who during the day had perforce to hide themselves in the woods and there await the reinforcements of the equinox, the main body of the army of cloud and storm which was assembling somewhere over the Atlantic. But they were known to be there, those chilly patrols, and the threat they implied gave a greater charm to the lovely days that still remained—a charm with a touch of poignance about it; for the mists that came with twilight were mingled with longing and regret. Soon the earth would be exchanging for a robe of gray her green raiment of summer. Here and there the slopes of the mountains showed dark patches where the trees had been stripped of their leaves. In the valley, the fields, now reddish brown in color, showed glimpses of mold beneath their shorn vegetation, which the rains were transforming into rich manure. It was in this autumn setting that a crowning incident took place. Let us then, for the last time, listen to Cyprien Beausoleil as he tells the story:
“Well, it was Sunday morning, at the beginning of High Mass, a bit after ten o’clock to be exact. As usually happens, while the women were at church the men stayed in the cafés, and all the most important ones were at Torbayon’s. Arthur had got back from the hospital. He preferred to feel himself at home, with his arm in a sling, to being stretched out in a bed, with the thought of the inn being closed, which gave him fits, imagining all his customers going off to drink at the Skylark or at Mother Bocca’s, a nasty little tavern in the lower town. Well, so he’d come back with his shoulder still bad, leaving Adèle behind and getting on slowly, and that Sunday the inn was full of people again, all of ’em talking about everything you could think of, but chiefly about the harvest having failed and the disasters that happened in the fight. As far as Arthur was concerned, the fact of having been both wounded and made a cuckold so that everyone knew about it had lowered his tone a bit and made him a pleasanter man altogether, and everyone liked him better in consequence. That only shows how people often need a bit of rough stuff to bring them to reason.
“Well, there we all were, drinking and talking good-naturedly, and occasionally glancing outside, because there were women passing all the time, and it’s generally the best dressed and nicest-looking ones that get to Mass late. Except for them the street was empty. After what had happened that year, everyone thought there could never be anything worse in the way of a catastrophe—and never anything funnier than Tafardel (who hadn’t yet got over the blow on his head), who was kicking up an awful fuss and swearing vengeance all over the town; and his rage made him so thirsty that he’d go off and tipple regularly. Once he had a few glasses inside him it was positively frightening. He was that violent in his opinions, he’d have been ready to torture his own father and mother for the sake of ’em. Never have I seen a man begin like that, all quiet and mild, and than go all raving and furious, after just one jug of Beaujolais. It just shows you. Ideas in a weak head may lead to ruin, sir.
“Well, anyhow, there we all were, calm and peaceful, a bit torpid with the pleasant feeling that comes after drinking wine on empty stomachs, not thinking about much, to tell the truth, and only waiting for Mass to end so as to see our womenfolk coming back once more and having a good look at them as they passed, which is the thing we most enjoy here on Sundays. And then all of a sudden someone shouted out, and all of us jumped up and rushed to the door or the window. And the sight we saw! It was the maddest, absurdest one you could ever possibly have dreamed of, but frightful, and sad too. Try and imagine it, if you can.
“What did we see coming along into Monks’ Alley but a hideous looking nanny goat, with a string of beads around her stomach and a little hat perched up on top of her head and slanting down to one side. Guess who it was! It was Putet, my dear sir, with not a stitch of clothing, and a sort of raging look, and talking as though she’d never stop, and making signs, and uttering a string of smutty filth enough to make a whole regiment. of zouaves turn tail. Gone clean crazy, she had! A sort of special kind of madness, it was—ero—something. . . .”
“Erotic, Monsieur Beausoleil?”
“That’s right, sir, you’ve got it. An erotic loony, that’s what Putet was, that October Sunday when High Mass was going on. Seems like it was that moral tone of hers that she’d never been able to palm off on anyone else. It ended by sending her off her head. That only shows that when people get too moral it can play the devil with ’em. ‘Long-continued continence,’ said Dr. Mouraille later, ‘it’s not healthy’—and he ought to know more about it than Ponosse, when all’s said and done.
“Well, there was Putet coming towards us in the get-up I mentioned, and us all stuck there looking at her, more from curiosity than pleasure, I can tell you, for it wasn’t a pretty picture, I’ll say it wasn’t! Now if it’d been Adèle, or Judith, or lots of others I could mention that we’d seen like that we’d have loved it, and felt we wanted to go and help them, and give ’em some support if necessary. But that woman, she only made us feel pity, and sadness, and disgust. Seeing her such a rotten, ugly, frightful sight seemed to make us understand her nasty, spiteful ways better, though she was an evil-doing, talebearing sneak. Her thinness was appalling, she was almost like a ghost that frightens the life out of you in the night. She was just a bag of bones, with her skin all frazzled, and scattered here and there with nasty stiff hair like an animal’s. As for the color of her, it was a sort of yellowy brown. And her face looking more spiteful than ever, and that squeaky, squalling voice like the creaking hinges of an old door that’s got damp. It was just an abominable sight, every bit of it.
“We’d no time to get over our astonishment. Naked as she was, that mad creature, what does she do but go straight into the church, by the main entrance, shouting and bawling out a chorus of frightful insults and abuse. And there we were, all of us, starting to run after her, and thinking what a weird, extraordinary thing it’d be, her marching in there while Mass was going on.
“And so it turned out, and even more so than you’d ever have thought. Still yelling, down the main aisle she went, and all the women of the parish crying out in terror, as though they’d seen the Devil himself changed into a woman—which made him all the more terrible. And there was Ponosse just turning around for a Dominus vobiscum, and standing there struck all of a heap, with no idea of what to do beyond saying over and over again: ‘But, my dear lady, my dear lady . . . you can’t do things like this!’ And all that he did was to bring down on his own head the full fury of the woman. She let him have it for all she was worth, accusing him of all the most dirty, disgusting tricks a man can play by taking advantage of weak-minded people. Then, seizing her opportunity while everyone was still gaping with amazement, that hussy went right up into the pulpit, and there she was, starting off to preach a diabolical, crazy sort of sermon of a kind that’d never yet been heard in a church, that’s certain. At last, Nicolas, recovering from the shock, put down his halberd and made for the pulpit in order to get Putet out of it. No sooner did he reach the bottom of the little flight of steps than he got the whole lot of Ponosse’s devotional books slap in his face, and the footstool on his head, thrown with all a mad person’s strength. If he hadn’t had his uniform hat on, it’d have been a knockout for him. As it was, it made him dizzy and no more use, to say nothing of the fact that his legs were rocky after the nasty blow that Toumignon had given him—where he did. And so Putet was mistress of the situation entirely, naked in a church pulpit, and her hat crookeder than ever. There was nothing for it but for everyone to take a hand, and attack her from several ladders put up at the sides, while Toumignon took hold of her from behind and dragged her down by her hair. The end of it was that with several going for her at the same time, they managed to get her home, and Dr. Mouraille came, and in the afternoon they took her by car to Villefranche, dressed this time, and bound so she couldn’t move. She was shut up in an asylum at Bourg, a hopeless case. No one bothered any more about her. But this much is certain, that she was a good riddance to the town, for if it hadn’t been for her a mess of worry and trouble wouldn’t ever have occurred at all, and Tatave would be still living, and maybe he’d have preferred to stay alive, Tatave would, soft though he was.
“All this is just to let you see how Putet was certainly the most mischievous wretch of a woman that’s ever been a stench in the nostrils of this town. And if you look at it in another way, she was a poor, unhappy old maid as well. You don’t often find spiteful, ill-natured people are happy, that’s so, isn’t it? They’re just their own poison. Putet must have made her own life not worth living. And yet it wasn’t her fault, seeing she’d never asked to be put into this world such a dowdy fright as she was, so that for a whole lifetime not a man would have anything to do with her. If she’d had her share like the other women she wouldn’t have been jealous of them. It isn’t virtue that warms your heart, whatever you may say. Yes, in a way you may say she was just a poor, unhappy creature, one of the different kinds of victims of the cursed, hopeless mess and muddle that this world is.
“And now I’ve told you the last of Putet. And when she disappeared, that was also the end of the famous disturbances, and there’s never been anything like them since. And I may tell you it’s a good thing too, for it’s not the sort of life you’d choose, when people are for ever fighting and quarreling and abusing each other. Epecially in a countryside where good wine’s grown, as you see it is here. What you’re drinking is Clochemerle 1924. That was a fine year. The harvest gave about thirteen per cent strength. A wine fit for the Pope’s Mass, that was, sir!”