"I have faith in the improbable.

It may not be so very long before I drop in again to drink another flask of your wine on my way through Arragon with King Charles on his march toward Madrid." "If you do, my son, I will produce a bottle of wine to which this is but ditch water.

I have three or four stored away in my cellar which I preserve for great occasions.

They are the remains of the cellar of my predecessor, as good a judge of wine as ever lived.

It is forty years since he laid them by, and they were, he said, the best vintage he had ever come across.