Our road lay for a little way along the Boulevards, then down the Rue Vivienne, and through the Palais Royal to the quays; but long ere we came within sight of the river this magical calm had begun to break up. The shop-boys in the Palais Royal were already taking down the shutters--the great book-stall at the end of the Galerie Vitrée showed signs of wakefulness; and in the Place du Louvre there was already a detachment of brisk little foot-soldiers at drill. By the time we had reached the open line of the quays, the first omnibuses were on the road; the water-carriers were driving their carts and blowing their shrill little bugles; the washer-women, hard at work in their gay, oriental-looking floating kiosques, were hammering away, mallet in hand, and chattering like millions of magpies; and the early matin-bell was ringing to prayers as we passed the doors of St. Germain L'Auxerrois. And now we were skirting the Quai de l'École, looking down upon the bath known in those days as Molino's--a hugh, floating quadrangular structure, surrounded by trellised arcades and rows of dressing-rooms, with a divan, a café restaurant, and a permanent corps of cooks and hair-dressers on the establishment. For your true Parisian has ever been wedded to his Seine, as the Venetian to his Adriatic; and the École de Natation was then, as now, a lounge, a reading-room, an adjunct of the clubs, and one of the great institutions of the capital. Some bathers, earlier than ourselves, were already sauntering about the galleries in every variety of undress, from the simple _caleçon_ to the gaudiest version of Turkish robe and Algerian _kepi_. Some were smoking; some reading the morning papers; some chatting in little knots; but as yet, with the exception of two or three school-boys (called, in the _argot_ of the bath, _moutards_), there were no swimmers in the water. With some of these loungers Müller exchanged a nod or a few words as we passed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed, stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to a popular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor buttons, red sash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes. Müller introduced this romantic-looking person to me as "Monsieur Barbet." "My friend, Monsieur Barbet," said he, "is the prince of swimming-masters. He is more at home in the water than on land, and knows more about swimming than a fish. He will calculate you the specific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, and is capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put to the test." "Monsieur can swim?" said the master, addressing me, with a nautical scrape. "I think so," I replied. "Many gentlemen think so," said Monsieur Barbet, "till they find themselves in the water."