Keith [on semi hiatus]’s Reviews > The Earth > Status Update

Then he added, still with a laugh:
'Ah well! Everyone rides his own hobby-horse! If you get my bread cheap, then French agriculture will be ruined, and if you don't get it cheap, then French industry might as well pack up. Your labour costs go up, the price of manufactured goods goes up, all my tools, my clothes, everything I need. Ah, what a mess we'll all land up in!'

...all the more uneasy because, for the last week, he had been unsuccessfully urging Monsieur de Chédeville to make an appearance, the deputy being at the time no doubt tangled up in some woman's skirts, perhaps even with the pretty wife of the parliamentary usher.

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...and depositing them in a steaming pile in his yard. And it was the same in every house, reeking vats, streaming presses, casks overflowing and all over Rognes the fumes of wine filled every corner and the smell alone was enough to make you drunk.

During the day, Buteau had put his wine in cask, six barrels which he had filled from the tap of the wat. But some neighbours were not so far advanced: one of them, still picking his grapes, had been treading them since morning, stark-naked; another one, armed with a stick, was watching the fermentation and pushing the head down into the seething must; a third, who had a press, was squeezing the skins and stalks...