Rich fields and stretches of woodland rolled back of the inn to the river, still whipped white by the gale and dotted with scudding sharpie-like canoes which had ventured out from a neighboring boat club.
The wind having abated the next day, I pushed down the river, past barges and iron foundries and rows of steam tow-boats, of which there are many plying between Paris and Rouen, moored to the shore.
These tow-boats were iron-clad and painted red. They were propelled by an endless chain arrangement jutting from bow to stern, which rattled as it cut the water. A little below this point, the character of the river changes. Quiet backwaters sheltered flocks of ducks and wild doves. By noon I reached the “Ile Jolie,” a cozy restaurant under shady green trees. It had a ballroom whose walls had been decorated by a clever caricature of a wedding procession, the payment, no doubt, for some bohemian supper of long ago, when madame the proprietress was young and the good comrade of idle painters.
Now its clientèle has changed, and the scow used as a ferry is shouted for from the opposite bank by Parisians with a fondness for game and champagne.
“It must be lonely here in the winter?” I venture.
“No, indeed, monsieur; on the contrary, it is quite gay.” And she added with a twinkle of her eye, “They come in the winter to show their furs.”
HERE, AS EVERYWHERE, THERE ARE PEOPLE FISHING
Below the “Ile Jolie” lie more long, quiet stretches, smooth backwaters flowing past feathery green islands full of cooing wild pigeons. As I round a point, a blue heron squawks and rises lazily, his long legs dangling. Farther on, a pair of black ducks scurry out of a hidden cove.
At sundown I glide under the bridge at Pont de Chatou. Here, as everywhere else along the Seine, there are people fishing. Often, all that is visible are the spider-webs of lines which lead from the water into the brush along the banks; but at the end of each thread buried in the tangle is some itinerant disciple of the patient Izaak.