Not long since I passed half an hour on the terrace, an amused witness of the perils of a voyage across the Seine in a punt. The adventurers were a _bourgeois_, his wife, sister, and child. Honest Pierre, the waterman, had conditioned to take the whole party to the island opposite and to return them safe to the main for the modicum of five sous. The old fox invariably charged me a franc for the same service. There was much demurring, and many doubts about encountering the risk; and more than once the women would have receded, had not the man treated the matter as a trifle. He affirmed _parole d'honneur_ that his father had crossed the Maine a dozen times, and no harm had come of it! This encouraged them, and, with many pretty screams, _mes fois_, and _oh, Dieu_, they finally embarked. The punt was a narrow scow that a ton weight would not have disturbed, the river was so low and sluggish that it might have been forded two-thirds of the distance, and the width was not three hundred feet. Pierre protested that the danger was certainly not worth mentioning, and away he went, as philosophical in appearance as his punt. The voyage was made in safety, and the bows of the boat had actually touched the shore on its return, before any of the passengers ventured to smile. The excursion, like most travelling, was likely to be most productive of happiness by the recollections. But the women were no sooner landed, than that rash adventurer, the husband, brother, and father, seized an oar, and began to ply it with all his force. He merely wished to tell his _confreres_ of the Rue Montmartre how a punt might be rowed. Pierre had gallantly landed to assist the ladies, and the boat, relieved of its weight, slowly yielded to the impulse of the oar, and inclined its bows from the land. "Oh! Edouard! mon mari! mon frere!--que fais-tu?" exclaimed the ladies. "Ce n'est rien," returned the man, puffing, and giving another lusty sweep, by which he succeeded in forcing the punt fully twenty feet from the shore. "Edouard! cher Edouard!" "Laisse-moi m'amuser,--je m'amuse, je m'amuse," cried the husband in a tone of indignant remonstrance. But Edouard, a tight, sleek little _epicier_, of about five-and-thirty, had never heard that an oar on each side was necessary in a boat, and the harder he pulled the less likely was he to regain the shore. Of this he began to be convinced, as he whirled more into the centre of the current; and his efforts now really became frantic, for his imagination probably painted the horrors of a distant voyage in an unknown bark to an unknown land, and all without food or compass. The women screamed, and the louder they cried, the more strenuously he persevered in saying, "Laisse-moi m'amuser--je m'amuse, je m'amuse." By this time the perspiration poured from the face of Edouard, and I called to the imperturbable Pierre, who stood in silent admiration of his punt while playing such antics, and desired him