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At Table with the Clergy: Like

Card. Ippolito Aldobrandino Cawell as many of the priceless growths of the Haut- Médoc. Like the odour of old arras, around the roseate and golden clusters of the vine clings the incense of prelacy and circles the aureole of the church.

One were more than ungrateful, too, to forget the invaluable services rendered by Dom Pérignon in contributing to the vinous delights of the table. Fancy, if one can, a world without champagne-not as a daily beverage, but as a talisman to loosen the tongues of the timid and a wand to evoke the joyous sally and brilliant repartee! With what other potable may one so appropriately pledge not only le beau sexe des deux hemisphères, mais les deux hemisphères du beau sexe? Almost equally to be commended are the Carthusian friars of Dauphiné, who evolved the greens and golds of Chartreuse; the cenobites of La Grâce-Dieu, who produced Trappistine; the Trappists of l'Allier, in whose cloister originated the elixir of long life, de Sept-Fonds; and the holy fathers of Rouen, who invented the delicious balm of Bon-Secours. The religious orders were early famed for their distillations. In the account of his travels in Italy the observant Seigneur de Montaigne mentions the Jesuits of Vicenza, who had a liqueur-shop in their monastery, as well as the monks of Verona, who were excellent distillers of eau de naffe, a liqueur made with the flower of citron. The famous Bénédictine, however, a rival of Chartreuse, though at present made by the monks of Fécamp in Normandy, and therefore possessing the stamp of monachism, was not of spiritual inspiration. Like the eau de vie des Carmes, Liqueur des Evèques, Eau Archiépiscopale, Liqueur des Chartreux, Plaisir des Dames, and Huile des Jeunes Mariés, it was worldly in its inception. Its history is interesting. In 1863 M. Le Grand, an enterprising wine-merchant of Fécamp, set about its manufacture, advertising it to the amount of eight hundred thousand francs, his entire fortune, the claim being made that the secret of its fabrication was consigned by a Benedictine brother to a manuscript in 1510 and opportunely discovered by the vender. The venture proved successful, as indeed the virtues of the liqueur merited, its annual sale now exceeding a million bottles. At first the clergy protested loudly against the bald appropriation of the name of an abbey, and Cardinal Bonnechose¹ petitioned Napoleon III to put an end to the scandal, the restored order eventually taking up the manufacture of the cordial and signing it with the name of the inventor, whose final Benedicite was recently pronounced. The present Archbishop of Rouen came to bless the most recent constructions of the abbey, among which is a superb Salle des Abbés, and, at the banquet following the ceremonial, during the dessert he compared the inventor of the liqueur to several of the heroes of Christianity. Benedictine (ad majorem Dei gloriam) is the only important liqueur thus far which has escaped analysis, although imitations of this and all others that have proved successful are freely placed upon the market.