C., sir, and if it was it's most
likely flat. You can't trust them vintages much farther back than
the French Revolootion, beggin' your pardon, sir."
Amory absently lifted the decanter, and then looked at it with some
curiosity. The decanter was like a vase, ornamented with gold
medallions covered with exquisite and precise engraving of great
beauty and variety of design. Serpents, men contending with lions,
sacred trees and apes were chased in the gold, and the little cups
of sard were engraved in pomegranates and segments of fruit and
pendent acorns, and were set with cones of cornelian. The cups were
joined by a long cord of thick gold.
Amory set his hand to the little golden stopper, perhaps
hermetically sealed, he thought idly, at about the time of the
accidental discovery of glass itself by the Phoenicians. Amory was
not imaginative, but as he thought of the possible age of the wine,
there lay upon him that fascination communicable from any link
between the present and the living past.
"Solomon and Sargon," he said to himself, "the geese in the capitol,
Marathon, Alexander, Carthage, the Norman conquest, Shakespeare and
Miss Frothingham!"
He smiled and twisted the carven stopper.
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