A little taper for cigarettes happened to be in front of me; I held my glass in its light and lost myself in the wine's pure depths of mystery and colour; and my mind wandered to the lusty sunshine of "Lusitanian summers" that was there imprisoned.

I inhaled its fragrance, I accepted its exquisite and spacious generosity.

Wine, like bread and oil--"God's three chief words"-- is a thing of itself--a thing of earth and air and sun--one of the great natural things, such as the stars and the flowers and the eyes of a dog.

Even the most mouth-twisting new wine of Northern Italy has its fascination for me, in that it is essentially something apart from the dust and empty racket of the world; how much more then this radiant vintage suddenly awakened from its slumber in the darkness of forty years.

So I mused, as I think an honest man is justified in musing, soberly, over a great wine, when suddenly my left eye caught Adrian's face.