ouquet, and
general beneficence, and the delicate and affectionate care with which
it was handled, one could have heard him talk all day. Now and then
younger houses discovered things that were going to revolutionize the
wine trade.

"Of course," he said, "we examine such things. We look in our books,
where records of all our experiments are kept, and there we find that we
tried that new thing in 1856--or 1756, perhaps."

Far underground we came on some of the huge majorums, big as nine
ordinary bottles. "The King of Spain ran over to Bordeaux one day, and
came to us and said: 'I've got two hours; what can you show me?' We
said: 'We can show you our cellars.' 'Very well,' said he; 'go ahead.'
When he came to the majorums he said: 'What on earth do you do with
those ?' 'They are used when there is a christening or a wedding or some
great event, and when a king visits us we give him two.'"

So they sent the majorums to the young King, and the King sent back a
polite note, just as if he were anybody else, and that is all of that
story.

Most of the newspapers which followed the government to Bordeaux have
returned to the capital, but that intransigeant government-baiter, the
venerable Georges Clemenceau, still continues his bombardment from close
range. His paper was formerly L'Homme Libre--The Free Man--but on being
suppressed this fall by the censor its octogenarian editor gayly changed
its name to The Chained Man--L'Homme Enchaine--and continued fire.

The mayor of a Paris commune in '71, prime minister from 1906-9, the
editor of various papers, and senator now, Clemenceau is properly
feared; and he was offered, it is said, a place in the present
government, but would accept no post but the highest. He preferred his
role of political realist and critical privateer, a sort of Mr. Shaw of
French politics, hitting a head wherever he sees one.

The imperfections of the French army sanitary service, the censorship,
and the demoralization of the postal service since the war have been
favorite targets recently. There has been much complaint of the
difficulty of getting news from men at the front. M. Viviani, the
premier, in an address at Reims, ventured to say that it was his duty to
"organize, administer, and intensify the national defense." On this
innocent phrase the eye of M. Clemenceau fell the other day, and he now
flings off a characteristic three-and-a-half-column front-page salvo so
adroitly combining