Note 390 — PART II.

Cazotte, ex-Commissary-General of the Navy and author of the Diable Amoureux, who was guillotined as a Royalist in 1792, had a magnificently fitted mansion at Pierry. He distinguished himself by his opposition to the pretensions of the Abbey of Hautvillers, which in 1775 claimed the right of taking tithes at Pierry not only in the vineyards, but on the wine in the cellars. Cazotte argued that unless the monks chose to take their due proportion of grapes left for them at the foot of each vine, all they were entitled to was a monetary commutation of the tithe; for the wine being usually made of grapes from a dozen different sources, many of them beyond their domain, it would be impossible to ascertain the proportion that was their due. The Parliament of Paris decided, however, that the abbey might take the fortieth of the wine a month after it was barrelled, unless the vine-growers preferred to give them the fortieth part of all the grapes brought to the press. The fact was that the monks really wished to check the practice of mixing grapes from different districts at the press, for fear wine equal to their own should result from this plan, first satisfactorily put in practice by Dom Perignon. Arthur Young mentions that an arpent of vines at Pierry was valued at 2000 livres, half the price the same extent commanded at Hautvillers.