Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEVICES FROM THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS.]

VI.--THE REIMS CHAMPAGNE ESTABLISHMENTS.

Messrs. Werle and 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. Werle and his Son-- The Forty-five Cellars of the Clicquot-Werle Establishment-- Our Tour of Inspection-- Ingenious Liqueuring Machine-- An Explosion and its Consequences-- M. Werle's Gallery of Paintings-- Madame Clicquot's Renaissance House and its Picturesque Bas-reliefs-- The Werle Vineyards and Vendangeoirs-- M. Louis Roederer's Establishment-- Heidsieck and Co. and their Famous "Monopole" Brand-- The Firm Founded in the Last Century-- Their various Establishments Inside and Outside Reims-- The Matured Wines s.h.i.+pped by them.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The cellars of the great champagne manufacturers of Reims are scattered in all directions over the historical old city. They undermine its narrowest and most insignificant streets, its broad and handsome boulevards, and on the eastern side extend to its more distant outskirts. Messrs. Werle and Co., the successors of the famous Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, have their offices and cellars on the site of a former Commanderie of the Templars in an ancient quarter of the city, and strangers pa.s.sing by the spot would scarcely imagine that under their feet hundreds of busy hands are incessantly at work, disgorging, dosing, shaking, corking, storing, wiring, labelling, capsuling, waxing, tinfoiling, and packing hundreds of thousands of bottles of champagne destined for all parts of the civilised world.

The house of Clicquot, established in the year 1798 by the husband of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, who died in 1866, in her 89th year, was indebted for much of the celebrity of its wine to the lucky accident of the Russians occupying Reims in 1814 and 1815, and freely requisitioning the sweet champagne stored in the widow's capacious cellars. Madame Clicquot's wines were slightly known in Russia prior to this date, but the officers of the invading army, on their return home, proclaimed their merits throughout the length and breadth of the Muscovite Empire, and the fortune of the house was made. Madame Clicquot, as every one knows, ama.s.sed enormous wealth, and succeeded in marrying both her daughter and granddaughter to counts of the _ancien regime_.

The present head of the firm is M. Werle, who comes of an old Lorraine family although born in the ancient free imperial town of Wetzlar on the Lahn, where Goethe lays the scene of his "Sorrows of Werther," the leading incidents of which really occurred here. M. Werle entered the establishment, which he has done so much to raise to its existing position, so far back as the year 1821. His care and skill, exercised over more than half a century, have largely contributed to obtain for the Clicquot brand that high repute which it enjoys to-day all over the world. M. Werle, who has long been naturalised in France, was for many years Mayor of Reims and President of its Chamber of Commerce, as well as one of the deputies of the Marne to the Corps Legislatif. He enjoys the reputation of being the richest man in Reims, and, like his late partner, Madame Clicquot, he has also succeeded in securing brilliant alliances for his children, his son, M. Alfred Werle, having married the daughter of the Duc de Montebello, while his daughter espoused the son of M. Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME VEUVE CLICQUOT AT EIGHTY YEARS OF AGE.

(_From the Painting by Leon Coignet_.) (p. 64)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLICQUOT-WERLe ESTABLISHMENT AT REIMS. (p. 65)]

Half-way down the narrow tortuous Rue du Temple is an ancient gateway, on which may be traced the half-effaced sculptured heads of Phbus and Bacchus. Immediately in front is a green _porte-cochere_ forming the entrance to the Clicquot-Werle establishment, and conducting to a s.p.a.cious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weatherc.o.c.k consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and to-day a few fragments of the ancient buildings remain adjacent to the "celliers" of the establishment, which are reached through a pair of folding-doors and down a flight of stone steps, and whence, after being furnished with lighted candles, we set out on our tour of inspection, entering first of all the vast cellar of St. Paul, where the thousands of bottles requiring to be daily shaken are reposing necks downwards on the large perforated tables which crowd the apartment. It is a peculiarity of the Clicquot-Werle establishment that each of the cellars--forty-five in number, and the smallest a vast apartment--has its special name. In the adjoining cellar of St. Matthew other bottles are similarly arranged, and here wine in cask is likewise stored. We pa.s.s rows of huge tuns, each holding its twelve or thirteen hundred gallons of fine reserved wine designed for blending with more youthful growths; next are threading our way between seemingly endless piles of hogsheads filled with later vintages, and anon are pa.s.sing smaller casks containing the syrup with which the _vin prepare_ is dosed. At intervals we come upon some square opening in the floor through which bottles of wine are being hauled up from the cellars beneath in readiness to receive their requisite adornment before being packed in baskets or cases according to the country to which they are destined to be despatched. To Russia the Clicquot champagne is sent in cases containing sixty bottles, while the cases for China contain as many as double that number.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REMAINS OF THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS.]

The ample cellarage which the house possesses has enabled M. Werle to make many experiments which firms with less s.p.a.ce at their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the wine undergoes its diurnal shaking. Instead of these racks being, as they commonly are, at almost upright angles, they are perfectly horizontal, which, in M. Werle's opinion, offers a material advantage, inasmuch as the bottles are all in readiness for disgorging at the same time instead of the lower ones being ready before those above, as is the case when the ancient system is followed, owing to the uppermost bottles getting less shaken than the others.

After performing the round of the celliers we descend into the _caves_, a complete labyrinth of gloomy underground corridors excavated in the bed of chalk which underlies the city, and roofed and walled with solid masonry, more or less blackened by age. In one of these cellars we catch sight of rows of work-people engaged in the operation of dosing, corking, securing, and shaking the bottles of wine which have just left the hands of the _degorgeur_ by the dim light of half-a-dozen tallow candles. The latest invention for liqueuring the wine is being employed.

Formerly, to prevent the carbonic acid gas escaping from the bottles while the process of liqueuring was going on, it was necessary to press a gutta-percha ball connected with the machine, in order to force the escaping gas back. The new machine, however, renders this unnecessary, the gas by its own power and composition forcing itself back into the wine.

In the adjoining cellar of St. Charles are stacks of bottles awaiting the manipulation of the _degorgeur_, while in that of St. Ferdinand men are engaged in examining other bottles before lighted candles to make certain that the sediment is thoroughly dislodged and the wine perfectly clear before the disgorgement is effected. Here, too, the corking, wiring, and stringing of the newly-disgorged wine are going on. Another flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the moisture trickles down the dank dingy walls, and save the dim light thrown out by the candles we carried, and by some other far-off flickering taper stuck in a cleft stick to direct the workmen, who with dexterous turns of their wrists give a twist to the bottles, all is darkness. On every side bottles are reposing in various att.i.tudes, the majority in huge square piles on their sides, others in racks slightly tilted, others, again, almost standing on their heads, while some, which through over-inflation have come to grief, litter the floor and crunch beneath our feet.

Tablets are hung against each stack of wine indicating its age, and from time to time a bottle is held up before the light to show us how the sediment commences to form, or explain how it eventually works its way down the neck of the bottle, and finally settles on the cork. Suddenly we are startled by a loud report resembling a pistol-shot, which reverberates through the vaulted chamber, as a bottle close at hand explodes, das.h.i.+ng out its heavy bottom as neatly as though it had been cut by a diamond, and dislocating the necks and pounding in the sides of its immediate neighbours. The wine trickles down, and eventually finds its way along the sloping sides of the slippery floor to the narrow gutter in the centre.

Ventilating shafts pa.s.s from one tier of cellars to the other, enabling the temperature in a certain measure to be regulated, and thereby obviate an excess of breakage. M. Werle estimates that the loss in this respect during the first eighteen months of a _cuvee_ amounts to 7 per cent., but subsequently is considerably less. In 1862 one champagne manufacturer lost as much as 45 per cent. of his wine by breakages. The Clicquot _cuvee_ is made in the cave of St. William, where 120 hogsheads of wine are hauled up by means of a crane and discharged into the vat daily as long as the operation lasts. The _tirage_ or bottling of the wine ordinarily commences in the middle of May, and occupies fully a month.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RENAISSANCE HOUSE AT REIMS, IN WHICH MADAME CLICQUOT RESIDED. (p. 69)]

M. Werle's private residence is close to the establishment in the Rue du Temple, and here he has collected a small gallery of high-cla.s.s modern paintings by French and other artists, including Meissonnier's "Card-players," Delaroche's "Beatrice Cenci on her way to Execution,"

Fleury's "Charles V. picking up the brush of t.i.tian," various works by the brothers Scheffer, Knaus's highly-characteristic _genre_ picture, "His Highness on a Journey," and several fine portraits, among which is one of Madame Clicquot, painted by Leon Coignet, when she was eighty years of age, and another of M. Werle by the same artist, regarded as a _chef-d'uvre_. Before her father's death Madame Clicquot used to reside in the Rue de Marc, some short distance from the cellars in which her whole existence centered, in a handsome Renaissance house, said to have had some connection with the row of palaces that at one time lined the neighbouring and then fas.h.i.+onable Rue du Tambour. This, however, is extremely doubtful. A number of interesting and well-preserved bas-reliefs decorate one of the facades of the house looking on to the court. The figures are of the period of Francois Premier and his son Henri II., who inaugurated his reign with a comforting edict for the Protestants, ordaining that blasphemers were to have their tongues pierced with red-hot irons, and heretics to be burnt alive, and who had the ill-luck to lose his eye and life through a lance-thrust of the Comte de Montgomerie, captain of his Scotch guards, whilst jousting with him at a tournament held in honour of the marriage of his daughter Isabelle with the gloomy widower of Queen Mary of England, of sanguinary fame.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The first of these bas-reliefs represents two soldiers of the Swiss guard, the next a Turk and a Slav tilting at each other, and then comes a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical motto: "Giane le sur ou rien." In the third bas-relief a couple of pa.s.sionate Italians are winding up a gambling dispute with a hand-to-hand combat, in the course of which table, cards, and dice have got cantered over; the fourth presenting us with two French knights, armed _cap-a-pie_, engaged in a tourney; while in the fifth and last a couple of German lansquenets essay their gladiatorial skill with their long and dangerous weapons. Several years back a tablet was discovered in one of the cellars of the house, inscribed "Ci-gist venerable religieux maistre Pierre Dercle, docteur en theologie, jadis prieur de ceans. Priez Dieu pour luy. 1486," which would almost indicate that the house had originally a religious character, although the warlike spirit of the bas-reliefs decorating it renders any such supposition with regard to the existing building untenable.

The Messrs. Werle own numerous acres of vineyards, comprising the very finest situations in the well-known districts of Verzenay, Bouzy, Le Mesnil, and Oger, at all of which places they have vendangeoirs or pressing-houses of their own. Their establishment at Verzenay contains seven presses, that at Bouzy eight, at Le Mesnil six, and at Oger two, in addition to which grapes are pressed under their own supervision at Ay, Avize, and Cramant in vendangeoirs belonging to their friends.

Since the death of Madame Clicquot the legal style of the firm has been Werle and Co., successors to Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, the mark, of which M. Werle and his son are the sole proprietors, still remaining "Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin," while the corks of the bottles are branded with the words "V. Clicquot-P. Werle," encircling the figure of a comet.

The style of the wine--light, delicate, elegant, and fragrant--is familiar to all connoisseurs of champagne. What, however, is not equally well known is that within the last few years the firm, in obedience to the prevailing taste, have introduced a perfectly dry wine of corresponding quality to the richer wine which made the fortune of the house.

The house of M. Louis Roederer, founded by a plodding German named Schreider, pursued the sleepy tenor of its way for years, until all at once it felt prompted to lay siege to the Muscovite connection of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin and secure a market for its wine at Moscow and St. Petersburg. It next opened up the United States, and finally introduced its brand into England. The house possesses cellars in various parts of Reims, and has its offices in one of the oldest quarters of the city--namely, the Rue des elus, or ancient Rue des Juifs, records of which date as far back as 1103. These offices are at the farther end of a courtyard beyond which is a second court, where carts being laden with cases of champagne seemed to indicate that some portion of the s.h.i.+pping business of the house is here carried on.

M. Louis Roederer refused our request for permission to visit his establishments, so that it is only of their external appearance that we are able to speak. One of them--the facade of which is rather imposing, and which has a carved head of Bacchus surmounting the _porte-cochere_--is situated in the Boulevard du Temple, while the princ.i.p.al establishment, a picturesque range of buildings of considerable extent, is in the neighbouring Rue de la Justice.

The old-established firm of Heidsieck and Co., which has secured a reputation in both hemispheres for its famous Monopole and Dry Monopole brands, has its cellars scattered about Reims, the central ones, where the wine is prepared and packed, being situated in the narrow winding Rue Sedan, at no great distance from the Clicquot-Werle establishment.

The original firm dates back to 1785, when France was struggling with those financial difficulties that a few years later culminated in that great social upheaving which kept Europe in a state of turmoil for more than a quarter of a century. Among the archives of the firm is a patent, bearing the signature of the Minister of the Prussian Royal Household, appointing Heidsieck and Co. purveyors of champagne to Friedrich William III. The champagne-drinking Hohenzollern _par excellence_, however, was the son and successor of the preceding, who, from habitual over-indulgence in the exhilarating sparkling beverage during the last few years of his reign, acquired the _sobriquet_ of King Clicquot.

On pa.s.sing through the large _porte-cochere_ giving entrance to Messrs.

Heidsieck's princ.i.p.al establishment, one finds oneself in a small courtyard with the surrounding buildings overgrown with ivy and venerable vines. On the left is a dwelling-house enriched with elaborate mouldings and cornices, and at the farther end of the court is the entrance to the cellars, surmounted by a sun-dial bearing the date 1829.

The latter, however, is no criterion of the age of the buildings themselves, as these were occupied by the firm at its foundation, towards the close of the last century. We are first conducted into an antiquated-looking low cellier, the roof of which is sustained with rude timber supports, and here bottles of wine are being labelled and packed, although this is but a mere adjunct to the adjacent s.p.a.cious packing-room provided with its loading platform and communicating directly with the public road. At the time of our visit this hall was gaily decorated with flags and inscriptions, the day before having been the fete of St. Jean, when the firm entertain the people in their employ with a banquet and a ball, at which the choicest wine of the house liberally flows. From the packing-room we descend into the cellars, which, like all the more ancient vaults in Reims, have been constructed on no regular plan. Here we thread our way between piles after piles of bottles, many of which having pa.s.sed through the hands of the disgorger are awaiting their customary adornment. The lower tier of cellars is mostly stored with _vin sur pointe_, and bottles with their necks downwards are encountered in endless monotony along a score or more of long galleries. The only variation in our lengthened promenade is when we come upon some solitary workman engaged in his monotonous task of shaking his 30,000 or 40,000 bottles per diem.

The disgorging at Messrs. Heidsieck's takes place, in accordance with the good old rule, in the cellars underground, where we noticed large stocks of wine three and five years old, the former in the first stage of _sur-pointe_, and the latter awaiting s.h.i.+pment. It is a speciality of the house to s.h.i.+p only matured wine, which is necessarily of a higher character than the ordinary youthful growths, for a few years have a wonderful influence in developing the finer qualities of champagne. At the time of our visit, in the spring of 1877, when the English market was being glutted with the crude, full-bodied wine of 1874, Messrs.

Heidsieck were continuing to s.h.i.+p wines of 1870 and 1872, beautifully rounded by keeping and of fine flavour and great delicacy of perfume, and of which the firm estimated they had fully a year's consumption still on hand.

Messrs. Heidsieck and Co. have a handsome modern establishment in the Rue Coquebert--a comparatively new quarter of the city where champagne establishments are the rule--the courtyard of which, alive with workmen at the time of our visit, is broad and s.p.a.cious, while the surrounding buildings are light and airy, and the cellars lofty, regular, and well ventilated. In a large cellier here, where the tuns are ranged side by side between the rows of iron columns supporting the roof, the firm make their _cuvee_; here too the bottling of their wine takes place, and considerable stocks of high-cla.s.s reserve wines and more youthful growths are stored ready for removal when required by the central establishment. The bulk of Messrs. Heidsieck's reserve wines, however, repose in the outskirts of Reims, near the Porte Dieu-Lumiere, in one of the numerous abandoned chalk quarries, which of late years the champagne manufacturers have discovered are capable of being transformed into admirable cellars.

In addition to s.h.i.+pping a rich and a dry variety of the Monopole brand, of which they are sole proprietors, Messrs. Heidsieck export to this country a rich and a dry Grand Vin Royal. It is, however, to their famous Monopole wine, and especially to the dry variety, which must necessarily comprise the finest growths, that the firm owe their princ.i.p.al celebrity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. ON THE REIMS HoTEL DE VILLE]

VII.--THE REIMS ESTABLISHMENTS (_continued_).

The Firm of G. H. Mumm and Co.-- Their Large s.h.i.+pments to the United States-- Their Establishments in the Rue Andrieux and the Rue Coquebert-- Bottle-Was.h.i.+ng with Gla.s.s Beads-- The Cuvee and the Tirage-- G. H. Mumm and Co.'s Vendangeoirs at Verzenay-- Their Various Wines-- The Gate of Mars-- The Establishment of M. Gustave Gibert on the Site of the Chateau des Archeveques-- His Cellars in the Vaults of St. Peter's Abbey and beneath the old Hotel des Fermes in the Place Royale-- Louis XV. and Jean Baptiste Colbert-- M. Gibert's Wines-- Jules Mumm and Co., and Ruinart pere et fils-- House of the Musicians-- The Counts de la Marck-- The Brotherhood of Minstrels of Reims-- Establishment of Perinet et fils-- Their Cellars of Three Stories in Solid Masonry-- Their Soft, Light, and Delicate Wines-- A Rare Still Verzenay-- M. Duchatel-Ohaus's Establishment and Renaissance House-- His Cellars in the Cour St.

Jacques and Outside the Porte Dieu-Lumiere.

Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have their chief establishment in the Rue Andrieux, in an open quarter of the city, facing the garden attached to the premises of M. Werle, and only a short distance from the grand triumphal arch known as the Gate of Mars, by far the most important Roman remain of which the Champagne can boast. The head of the firm, Mr. G. H. Mumm, is the grandson of the well-known P. A. Mumm, the large s.h.i.+pper of hocks and moselles, and is the only surviving partner in the champagne house of Mumm and Co., established at Reims in 1825, and joined by Mr. G. H. Mumm so far back as the year 1838. The firm not only s.h.i.+p their wine largely to England, but head the list of s.h.i.+pments to the United States, where their brand is held in high repute, with nearly half a million bottles, being more than twice the quant.i.ty s.h.i.+pped by M. Louis Roederer--who comes third on the list in question--and a fourth of the entire s.h.i.+pments of champagne to the United States.

The establishment of Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co., in the Rue Andrieux, is of comparatively modern construction. A large _porte-cochere_ conducts to a s.p.a.cious courtyard, bordered with sheds, beneath which huge stacks of new bottles are piled and having a pleasant garden lying beyond. On the left is a large vaulted cellier, where the operations of disgorging, liqueuring, and corking the wine are performed, and which communicates with the vast adjoining packing department. From this cellier entrance is gained to the cellars beneath, containing a million bottles of _vin brut_ in various stages of development. This forms, however, merely a portion of the firm's stock, they having another three millions of bottles stored in the cellars of their establishment in the Rue Coquebert, where a scene of great animation presented itself at the time of our visit, several scores of women being engaged in was.h.i.+ng bottles for the _tirage_, which, although it was early in May, had already commenced. The bottles, filled with water, and containing a certain quant.i.ty of gla.s.s beads in lieu of the customary shot, which frequently leave minute particles of lead--deleterious alike to health and the flavour of the wine--adhering to the inside surface of the gla.s.s, are placed horizontally in a frame, and by means of four turns of a handle are made to perform sixty-four rapid revolutions. The beads are then transferred to other bottles, which are subjected in their turn to the same revolving process.

The _cuvee_, commonly composed of from two to three thousand casks of wine from various vineyards, with a due proportion of high-cla.s.s vintages, is made in a vat holding 4,400 gallons. The _tirage_ or bottling is effected by means of two large tuns placed side by side, and holding twelve hogsheads of wine each. Pipes from these tuns communicate with a couple of small reservoirs, each of them provided with half-a-dozen self-acting syphon taps, by means of which a like number of bottles are simultaneously filled. Only one set of these taps are set running at a time, as while the wine is being drawn off from one tun the other is being refilled from the casks containing the _cuvee_ by means of a pump and leathern hose, which empties a cask in little more than a couple of minutes. Three gangs of eight men each can fill, cork, and secure with _agrafes_ from 35,000 to 40,000 bottles during the day. The labour is performed partly by men regularly employed by the house and partly by hands engaged for the purpose, who work, however, under the constant inspection of overseers appointed by the firm.

At Messrs. G. H. Mumm's the champagne destined for s.h.i.+pment has the heads of the corks submerged in a kind of varnish, with the object of protecting them from the ravages of insects, and preventing the string and wire from becoming mouldy for several years. In damp weather, when this varnish takes a long time to dry, after the bottles have been placed in a rack with their heads downwards to allow of any superfluous varnish draining from the corks, the latter are subjected to a moderate heat in a machine pierced with sufficient holes to contain 500 bottles, and provided with a warming apparatus in the centre. Here the bottles remain for about twenty minutes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TIRAGE OR BOTTLING OF CHAMPAGNE AT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO. (p. 76.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO.'S VENDANGEOIR AT VERZENAY. (p. 77)]

Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have a capacious vendangeoir at Verzenay, near the entrance to the village when approaching it from Reims. The building contains four presses, three of which are worked with large fly-wheels requiring several men to turn them, while the fourth acts with a screw applied by means of a long pole. At the vintage 3,600 kilogrammes, or nearly 8,000lbs., of grapes are put under each press, a quant.i.ty sufficient to yield eight to ten hogsheads of wine of forty-four gallons each, suitable for sparkling wine, besides three or four hogsheads of inferior wine given to the workmen to drink. The pressing commences daily at six in the morning, and lasts until midnight; yet the firm are often constrained to keep their grapes in the baskets under a cool shed for a period of two days. This cannot, however, be done when they are very ripe, as the colouring matter from the skins would become extracted and give a dark and objectionable tint to the wine.

Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. s.h.i.+p four descriptions of champagne--Carte Blanche, a pale, delicate, fragrant wine of great softness and refined flavour; a perfectly dry variety of the foregoing, known as their Extra Dry; also an Extra Quality and a First Quality--both high-cla.s.s wines, though somewhat lower in price than the two preceding.

Within a few minutes' walk of Messrs. G. H. Mumm's--past the imposing Gate of Mars, in the midst of lawns, parterres, and gravel-walks, where coquettish nursemaids and their charges stroll, accompanied by the proverbial _piou-piou_--is the princ.i.p.al establishment of M. Gustave Gibert, whose house claims to-day half a century of existence. On this spot formerly stood the feudal castle of the Archbishops of Reims, demolished nearly three centuries ago. By whom this stronghold was erected is somewhat uncertain. The local chronicles state that a chateau was built at Reims by Suelf, son of Hincmar, in 922, and restored by Archbishop Henri de France two and a half centuries later. War or other causes, however, seems to have rendered the speedy rebuilding of this castle necessary, as a new Chateau des Archeveques appears to have been erected at Reims by Henri de Braine between 1228 and 1230. The circ.u.mstance of the Archbishops of Reims being dukes and peers as well as primates of the capital of the Champagne accounts for their preference for a fortified place of residence at this turbulent epoch.

On the invest.i.ture of a new archbishop it was the custom for him to proceed in great pomp from the chateau to the church of Saint Remi, with a large armed guard and a splendid retinue of ecclesiastical, civil, and military dignitaries escorting him. The pride of the newly-created "duke and peer" having been thus gratified, the "prelate" had to humble himself, and on the morrow walked barefooted from the church of St. Remi to the cathedral. After the religious wars the chateau was surrendered to Henri IV., and in 1595 the Remois, anxious to be rid of so formidable a fortress, which, whether held by king or archbishop, was calculated to enforce a state of pa.s.sive obedience galling to their pride, purchased from the king the privilege to demolish it for the sum of 8,000 crowns.

Tradition a.s.serts that the Remish Bastille was destroyed in a single day, but this is exceedingly improbable. Its ruins certainly were not cleared away until the close of the century.

When the old fortress was razed to the ground its extensive vaults were not interfered with, but many long years afterwards were transformed into admirable cellars for the storage of champagne. Above them are two stories of capacious celliers where the wine is blended, bottled, and packed, the vaults themselves comprising two tiers of cellars which contain wine both in cask and bottle. M. Gibert's remaining stocks are stored in the ancient vaults of the abbey of St. Peter, in the heart of the city, and in the roomy cellars which underlie the old Hotel des Fermes in the Place Royale, where in the days of the _ancien regime_ the farmers-general of the province used to receive its revenues. On the pediment of this edifice is a bas-relief with Mercury, the G.o.d of commerce, seated beside a nymph and surrounded by children engaged with the vintage and with bales of wool, and evidently intended to symbolise the staple trades of the capital of the Champagne. A bronze statue rises in the centre of the Place which from its Roman costume and martial bearing might be taken for some hero of antiquity did not the inscription on the pedestal apprise us that it is intended for the "wise, virtuous, and magnanimous Louis XV.," a misuse of terms which has caused a transatlantic Republican to characterise the monument as a brazen lie. Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Ceres, in which there is a modernised 16th-century house claiming to be the birthplace of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances which the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards made such dreadful havoc of.