the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the
religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of
all its significance. It would be to filch from the city of St.-Remi and
of Clovis, of Urban II. and of Jeanne d'Arc, its great name--a robbery
that surely would not enrich the Third Republic, but that would leave
Reims poor indeed!

Of course it is possible that the laicised, unbaptized, and atheistic
French citizen of the future may come to regard the hegira of M.
Gambetta from Paris to Tours in a balloon, and the occupation of Tonkin,
as events of greater importance to mankind than the creation of France
by Clotilde and Clovis, or the rescue of France from conquest and
dismemberment by the pious peasant-girl of Domremy, or the rolling back
of Islam from the domination of the world by Urban II. Heaven forbid
that I should assume to set any limit to the things which a truly
scientific unbeliever is likely to believe!

But while men still abide in the thick darkness of the Catholic faith,
or even in the penumbral twilight of Protestant Christianity, I do not
see how Reims is to be one bit the better, materially or morally, for
the extinction of the religious sentiment in France.

The arrondissement of Reims contains very nearly 200,000 people, of whom
considerably more than one-third inhabit the city itself. A very large
proportion of these are employed in the numerous factories which
flourish here, and many more in the various industries connected with
the incessantly growing commerce in those sparkling wines which have
made the name of this ancient province synonymous with luxury and gaiety
in the remotest corners of the world. Though Epernay is the real
headquarters of this commerce, two or three of the most important houses
connected with it are, and long have been, established at Reims, and
some of the most remarkable of the vast cellars excavated in the chalk,
in which these sparkling wines are stored throughout the Department of
the Marne, are here to be seen. Here too, at least as well as at Epernay
or Chalons, acquaintance may be made, at the right time and in the right
places, with certain vintages of Champagne which seldom or never find
their way into the channels of trade, not so much because of their
rarity and high cost as because of their exceeding delicacy. It is
almost impossible, for example, to find even at Paris the finest quality
of the red _vin de cave_