THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
Page: 28

talent, Monsieur, is a bill of exchange which Nature gives to the man
of genius, and which often has a long time to run before it falls
due."

"That is usury!" cried Margaritis.

"The devil! he's keen, the old fellow! I've made a mistake," thought
Gaudissart, "I must catch him with other chaff. I'll try humbug No. 1.
Not at all," he said aloud, "for you who--"

"Will you take a glass of wine?" asked Margaritis.

"With pleasure," replied Gaudissart.

"Wife, give us a bottle of the wine that is in the puncheons. You are
here at the very head of Vouvray," he continued, with a gesture of the
hand, "the vineyard of Margaritis."

The maid-servant brought glasses and a bottle of wine of the vintage
of 1819. The good-man filled a glass with circumspection and offered
it to Gaudissart, who drank it up.

"Ah, you are joking, Monsieur!" exclaimed the commercial traveller.
"Surely this is Madeira, true Madeira?"

"So you think," said the fool. "The trouble with our Vouvray wine is
that it is neither a common wine, nor a wine that can be drunk with
the entremets. It is too generous, too strong. It is often sold in
Paris adulterated with brandy and called Madeira. The wine-merchants
buy it up, when our vintage has not been good enough for the Dutch and
Belgian markets, to mix it with wines grown in the neighborhood of
Paris, and call it Bordeaux. But what you are drinking just now, my
good Monsieur, is a wine for kings, the pure Head of Vouvray,--that's
it's name. I have two puncheons, only two puncheons of it left. People
who like fine wines, high-class wines, who furnish their table with
qualities that can't be bought in the regular trade,--and there are
many persons in Paris who have that vanity,--well, such people send
direct to us for this wine. Do you know any one who--?"

"Let us go on with what we were saying," interposed Gaudissart.

"We are going on," said the fool. "My wine is capital; you are
capital, capitalist, intellectual capital, capital wine,--all the same
etymology, don't you see? hein? Capital, 'caput,' head, Head of
Vouvray, that's my wine,--it's all one thing."