led _On the Seine_, telling all about that careless and vigorous,
that merry and poor life, a life of robust and noisy enjoyment, which I
led from the time I was twenty until I was thirty.

"I was a mere understrapper without a half-penny, and now I am a man who
has made his money, who has spent large sums on a momentary caprice. In
my heart, I had a thousand modest and unrealizable desires which gilded
my existence with imaginary hopes, though now, I really do not know that
any fancy would make me get out of my armchair where I am dozing. How
simple and nice and good it is to live like this, between my office in
Paris, and the river at Argenteuil. For ten years, the Seine was my
only, my absorbing passion. Ah! that beautiful, calm, diversified and
stinking river, full of mirage and filth. I think I loved it so much
because it seemed to give me a sense of life. Oh! what walks I had along
the grassy banks, where my friends the frogs were dreaming on the leaf
of a nenuphar, and where the coquettish and delicate water lilies
suddenly opened to me, behind a willow, a leaf of a Japanese album, and
when the kingfisher flashed past me like a blue flame! How I loved it
all, with the instinctive love of eyes which seemed to be all over my
body, and with a natural and profound joy.

"Just as other men keep the recollection of sweet and tender nights, so I
remember sunrises in the morning mist, floating, wandering vapors, which
were as pale as death, before the sun rose, and then as its first rays
glided over the meadows, lighted up with a rosy tint, which delighted
the heart. And then again, I have recollections of the moon silvering
the running, trembling water, with a brightness which made dreams
flourish. And all this, the symbol of eternal illusions, rose up in me
on that turbid water, which was carrying all the filth of Paris towards
the sea.

"And then, what a merry life it was, with my companions. There were five
of us, a band of grave men we are now; and as we were all poor, we had
founded an inexpressible colony in a horrible eating house at
Argenteuil, and which possessed only one bedroom, where I have
certainly spent some of the maddest nights of my life. We cared for
nothing except for amusing ourselves and rowing, for we all worshiped
the oar, with one exception. I remember such singular adventures, such
unlikely tricks invented by those five rascals, that no one would
believe them at present. People do not live li