Note 185 — PART I. (continued 2)

Marmontel’s Mémoires d’un Père pour l’instruction de ses Enfants. M. Louis Paris, in his Histoire de l’Abbaye d’Avenay, identifies this spot as one known indifferently as Le Fay or Feuilly. He furnishes some interesting details respecting Mademoiselle de Navarre, who, after being the mistress of Marshal Saxe, married the Chevalier de Mirabeau, brother to the Ami des Hommes and uncle of the celebrated orator, and then goes on to say: ‘In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the wines of Avenay shared with those of Hautvillers the glory of rivalling the best of Ay. “Avenay, les bons raisins,” was the popular saying inscribed on the banner of its chevaliers de l’Arquebuse (a corps of local sharpshooters). La Bruyère, St. Evremond, Boileau himself, Coulanges, L’Atteignant, and many others had celebrated the tender and delicate wines of our vineyards; and that of Madame l’Abbesse especially had acquired such a reputation, that several great families, strangers to the locality, thought it the right thing to have a vendangeoir at Avenay, and to pass part of the autumn in the renowned Val d’Or.’