Considerably impressed by their solicitude, I retired to the smoking-room, believing myself safe there from any form of vehicular peril. But the young man from Chicago sauntered in and took a seat close beside me, with benevolent intentions toward relieving my isolation.
I preferred any species of juggernaut to his rough riding over the English language, so I left him murkily enveloped in the fumes of his own cigar and sauntered out into the street.
The sky was cloudless; the air was purest balm. Through fresh clean streets I wandered under the cool shadows of flowering chestnuts, and presently found myself on the quay near the Pont des Arts, leaning over and looking at the river slipping past between its walls of granite.
In a solemn row below me sat some two dozen fishermen dozing over their sport. Their long white bamboo poles sagged, their red and white quill-floats bobbed serenely on the tide. Truly here was a company of those fabled Lotus-eaters, steeped in slumber; a dreamy, passionless band of brothers drowsing in the sunshine.
Looking east along the grey stone quays I could see hundreds and hundreds of others, slumbering over their fishpoles; looking west, the scenery was similar.
"The fishing must be good here," I observed to an aged man, leaning on the quay-wall beside me.
"Comme ça," he said.
I leaned there lazily, waiting to see the first fish caught. I am an angler myself, and understand patience; but when I had waited an hour by my watch I looked suspiciously at the aged man beside me. He was asleep, so I touched him.
He roused himself without resentment. "Have you," said I, sarcastically, "ever seen better fishing than this, in the Seine?"