They, all hatted and cloaked, flung his cloak over his shoulders, set his black slouch hat upon his head, and together tramped down the stairs and out into the street; and, linking arms, the students and their young women strolled along the roadway and made for the Boule Miche, singing a rousing student song—the dark and deserted street echoing to the racket.
They came out on the Place St. Michel, took hands, and in the dim moonlight they danced in a wide ring before the fountain in the wall where in his niche the bronze saint slays the dragon at the threshold of the student’s world.
Out of breath, they went and leaned over the parapet of the bridge of St. Michel, and then one sighed, and silence fell upon them all.
Out of the flood loomed the great towers of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and low down and beyond twinkled the lights of the Morgue; and, beyond all, the waters of the river swirled into the mists sweeping on to the restless sea—out into the night and the eternal mystery.
Gaston Latour leading, they clambered down to the river’s edge; and they sprinkled Horace with the waters of the Seine, and made him for ever a citizen of Paris.
Up they all clambered again, scaled the parapet, and joining hands, along the Boule Miche they went, singing—now forming a ring to dance round embarrassed policemen, now pounding shutters with their fists, greeting with a cheer the sleepy heads that were thrust out of open windows, blinking anxiously down into the night; and with these and the like tomfooleries, saluting the closed cafés where they had held their many light-hearted revels, they reached the garden of the Luxembourg—stood before the Pantheon—in the paling night they uncovered to the great dead. Thus silent, Horace stood for the last time as a student on the heights of Montparnasse. The immensity of the night was passing in purple majesty into the western heavens; and beyond, where the students’ highway topped the hill, in the smoky twilight glittered the morning star.
CHAPTER LXX
Wherein a Comely Young Woman broods upon the Years