I thanked her and looked the other way.
Our boat was now flying past the Louvre. Above in the streets I could see cabs and carriages passing, and the heads and shoulders of people walking on the endless stone terraces. Below, along the river bank, our boat passed between an almost unbroken double line of dozing fishermen.
Now we shot out from the ranks of lavoirs and bathhouses, and darted on past the Champ de Mars; past the ugly sprawling Eiffel Tower, past the twin towers of the Trocadero, and out under the huge stone viaduct of the Point du Jour.
Here the banks of the river were green and inviting. Cafés, pretty suburban dance-houses, restaurants, and tiny hotels lined the shores. I read on the signs such names as "The Angler's Retreat," "At the Great Gudgeon," "The Fisherman's Paradise," and I saw sign-boards advertising fishing, and boats to let.
"I should think," said I, turning to my pretty neighbor, "that it would pay to remove these fisherman's signs to Charenton."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because," said I, "nobody except a Charentonian would ever believe that any fish inhabit this river."
"Saint Cloud! Saint Cloud!" called out the ticket-agent as the boat swung in to a little wooden floating pier on the left bank of the river.
The ticket-agent carefully assisted me over the bridge to the landing-dock, and I whispered to him that I was the Duke of Flatbush and would be glad to receive him any day in Prospect Park.
Then, made merry at my own wit, I strolled off up the steps that led to the bank above.