aris was blockaded—famished—at the point of death. Even the sparrows on the housetops were few and far between, and the very sewers were in danger of becoming depopulated. People ate anything they could get.
Monsieur Morisot, watchmaker by trade, was walking early one bright January morning down the Boulevards, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, feeling hungry and depressed, when he unexpectedly ran against a friend. He recognised Monsieur Sauvage, an old time chum of the river-side.
Every Sunday before the war Morisot used to start at daybreak with his bamboo fishing rod in his hand, his tin bait and tackle box upon his back. He used to take the train to Colombes, and to walk from there to the Island of Maranthe. No sooner had he arrived at the river than he used to begin to fish and continue fishing until evening. Here every Sunday he used to meet Monsieur Sauvage, a linen-draper from Paris, but stout and jovial withal, as keen a fisherman moreover as he was himself.
Often they would sit side by side, their feet dangling over the water for half a day at a time and say scarcely a word, yet little by little they became friends. Sometimes they never spoke at all. Occasionally they launched out into conversation, but they understood each other perfectly without its aid, for their tastes and ideas were the same.
On a spring morning in the bright sunshine, when the light and delicate mist hovered over the river, and these two mad fishermen enjoyed a foretaste of real summer weather, Morisot would say to his neighbour: "Hein! not bad, eh?"
And Sauvage would reply: "I know nothing to beat it."
This interchange of sentiments was quite enough to engender mutual understanding and esteem.
In autumn, toward evening, when the setting sun reddened the sky and cast shadows of the fleeting clouds over the water; when the river was decked in purple; when the whole horizon was lighted up and the figures of the two friends were illumined as with fire; when the russet-brown of the trees was lightly tinged with gold, and the trees themselves shivered with a wintry shake, Monsieur Sauvage would smile at Monsieur Morisot and say, "What a sight, eh?"
And Monsieur Morisot, without even raising his eyes from his float would answer, "Better than the Boulevards, hein!"