Authors -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
In the summer the Passy swimming-bath was more delightful than ever.
Both winter and summer we passionately fenced with a pupil (un
prévôt) of the famous M. Bonnet, and did gymnastics with M. Louis,
the gymnastic master of the Collège Charlemagne--the finest man I
ever saw--a gigantic dwarf six feet high, all made up of lumps of
sinew and muscles, like....
Also, we were taught equitation at the riding-school in the Rue
Duphot.
On Saturday nights Barty would draw a lovely female profile, with a
beautiful big black eye, in pen and ink, and carefully shade it;
especially the hair, which was always as the raven's wing! And on
Sunday morning he and I used to walk together to 108 Champs Élysées
and enter the rez-de-chaussée (where my mother and sister lived) by
the window, before my mother was up. Then Barty took out his lovely
female pen-and-ink profile to gaze at, and rolled himself a
cigarette and lit it, and lay back on the sofa, and made my sister
play her lightest music--"La pluie de Perles," by Osborne--and
"Indiana," a beautiful valse by Marcailhou--and thus combine three
or four perfect blisses in one happy quart d'heure.
Then my mother would appear, and we would have breakfast--after
which Barty and I would depart by the window as we had come, and go
and do our bit of Boulevard and Palais Royal. Then to the Rue du Bac
for another breakfast with the Rohans; and then, "_au petit
bonheur_"; that is, trusting to Providence for whatever turned up.
The programme didn't vary very much: either I dined with him at the
Rohans', or he with me at 108. Then, back to Brossard's at
ten--tired and happy.
One Sunday I remember well we stayed in school, for old Josselin the
fisherman came to see us there--Barty's grandfather, now a widower;
and M. Mérovée asked him to lunch with us, and go to the baths in
the afternoon.
Imagine old Bonzig's delight in this "_vieux loup de mer_," as he
called him! That was a happy day for the old fisherman also; I shall
never forget his surprise at M. Dumollard's telescope--and how
clever he was on the subject.
He came to the baths, and admired and criticised the good swimming
of the boys--especially Barty's, which was really remarkable. I
don't believe he could swim a stroke himself.
Then we went and dined together at Lord Archibald's, in the Rue du
Bac--"Mon Colonel," as the old fisherman always called him. He was a
very humorous and intelligent person, this fisher, though nearer
eighty than seventy; very big, and of a singularly picturesque
appearance--for he had not _endimanché_ himself in the least; and
very clean. A splendid old man; oddly enough, somewhat Semitic of
aspect--as though he had just come from a miraculous draught of
fishes in the Sea of Galilee, out of a cartoon by Raphael!
I recollect admiring how easily and pleasantly everything went
during dinner, and all through the perfection of this ancient
sea-toiler's breeding in all essentials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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