ain the
hilarity of the vintage, transmitted from age to age in these last
glorious days of autumn, the remembrance of which inspired Rabelais with
the bacchic form of his great work.

The children, Jacques and Madeleine, had never seen a vintage; I was
like them, and they were full of infantine delight at finding a sharer
of their pleasure; their mother, too, promised to accompany us. We went
to Villaines, where baskets are manufactured, in quest of the prettiest
that could be bought; for we four were to cut certain rows reserved for
our scissors; it was, however, agreed that none of us were to eat too
many grapes. To eat the fat bunches of Touraine in a vineyard seemed
so delicious that we all refused the finest grapes on the dinner-table.
Jacques made me swear I would go to no other vineyard, but stay closely
at Clochegourde. Never were these frail little beings, usually pallid
and smiling, so fresh and rosy and active as they were this morning.
They chattered for chatter's sake, and trotted about without apparent
object; they suddenly seemed, like other children, to have more life
than they needed; neither Monsieur nor Madame de Mortsauf had ever seen
them so before. I became a child again with them, more of a child than
either of them, perhaps; I, too, was hoping for my harvest. It was
glorious weather when we went to the vineyard, and we stayed there half
the day. How we disputed as to who had the finest grapes and who could
fill his basket quickest! The little human shoots ran to and fro from
the vines to their mother; not a bunch could be cut without showing it
to her. She laughed with the good, gay laugh of her girlhood when I,
running up with my basket after Madeleine, cried out, "Mine too! See
mine, mamma!" To which she answered: "Don't get overheated, dear child."
Then passing her hand round my neck and through my hair, she added,
giving me a little tap on the cheek, "You are melting away." It was
the only caress she ever gave me. I looked at the pretty line of purple
clusters, the hedges full of haws and blackberries; I heard the voices
of the children; I watched the trooping girls, the cart loaded with
barrels, the men with the panniers. Ah, it is all engraved on my memory,
even to the almond-tree beside which she stood, girlish, rosy, smiling,
beneath the sunshade held open in her hand. Then I busied myself in
cutting the bunches and filling my basket, going forward to empty it
in the vat, silently, with