or animals enjoy will cease--their days of fun
and festival are numbered; their enemies up to this period have been
few--the rich proprietors, the privileged, but now the masses are
preparing, they are cleaning up their clumsy blunderbusses, and
to-morrow "the million" will take the field and assail and pop at them
from every road and pathway--for the mayor, after due consultation with
the principal personages in the village, has sent his drummer, his
Mercury, his crier, to beat a tattoo in all the public places, and
crossways, and announce in front of the _cabarets_ that the grapes being
ripe the _vendange_ is opened.

The following day, when the last star in the heavens is disappearing,
when the doors of morning are scarcely opened, every road is covered
with long lines of waggons drawn by oxen, and a cavalcade of horses and
mules, and great asses carrying panniers may be seen galloping along in
all directions. Voices, shouts, squeaking wheels, and neighing horses
are also heard on every side, and parties of _vendangeurs_ and
_vendangeuses_, arm in arm, with baskets on their backs, and grape
knives in their belts, their broad-brimmed hats encircled with ribbons
and flowers, are seen marching along, singing many a Bacchanalian chorus
in honour of the occasion. They are on their way to the vineyards, and
like so many fauns and Bacchantes, only well draped, are with joyous
hearts ready to gather in the harvest of the ruby grape.

In advance of this delighted and merry crowd, and always like the lark,
the first on the wing, the sportsman is already at his post,--for the
first day of the _vendange_ is, as Navarre used to say, a day of powder,
the _fete du fusil_. And now is formed a line of sometimes three hundred
_vendangeurs_ and _vendangeuses_ who starting at the same moment, ascend
the hill-side cutting the grapes, filling and emptying their baskets.
The young men strike up some jovial song in praise of wine, the girls
reply; and before this soul-stirring chorus, this burst of gay and
animated feeling, the game, astounded at the concert, break and retire
before them. Then is the moment for the sportsman, who, concealed in a
large thicket and comfortably seated at the summit of the hill, listens
and laughs in his sleeve as he hears the affrighted partridge call, and
the timid hare rushing through the vines towards him; they approach, are
within range of his gun, and ere long the shot-bag is emptied, and the
sportsman i