Lesson in the smallness of the world, for
what should come up the village street but that monstrous Barrel, and
we could see by its movements that it was still quite full.
We gathered round the peasant, and told him how grieved we were at his
ill fortune, and agreed with him that all the people of the Barrois
were thieves or madmen not to buy such wine for such a song. He took
his oxen and his barrel to a very high shed that stood by, and there
he told us all his pilgrimage and the many assaults his firmness
suffered, and how he had resisted them all. There was much more anger
than sorrow in his accent, and I could see that he was of the wood
from which tyrants and martyrs are carved. Then suddenly he changed
and became eloquent:
'Oh, the good wine! If only it were known and tasted! ... Here, give
me a cup, and I will ask some of you to taste it, then at least I
shall have it praised as it deserves. And this is the wine I have
carried more than a hundred miles, and everywhere it has been
refused!'
There was one guttering candle on a little stool. The roof of the shed
was lost up in the great height of darkness; behind, in the darkness,
the oxen champed away steadily in the manger. The light from the
candle flame lit his face strongly from beneath and marked it with
dark shadows. It flickered on the circle of our faces as we pressed
round, and it came slantwise and waned and disappeared in the immense
length of the Barrel. He stood near the tap with his brows knit as
upon some very important task, and all we, gunners and drivers of the
battery, began unhooking our mugs and passing them to him.
There were nearly a hundred, and he filled them all; not in jollity,
but like a man offering up a solemn sacrifice. We also, entering into
his mood, passed our mugs continually, thanking him in a low tone and
keeping in the main silent. A few linesmen lounged at the door; he
asked for their cups and filled them. He bade them fetch as many of
their comrades as cared to come; and very soon there was a circulating
crowd of men all getting wine of Brule and murmuring their
congratulations, and he was willing enough to go on giving, but we
stopped when we saw fit and the scene ended. I cannot tell what
prodigious measure of wine he gave away to us all that night, but when
he struck the roof of the cask it already sounded hollow. And when we
had made a collection which he had refused, he went to sleep by his
oxen, and we to our straw in other barns.
