[5] Et le fleuve, d’ores en avant municipal et historique, Et dignement d’archives, d’annales, de fastes, De gloire. Prenant du sérieux et même du morose De pierre grise, Se traîne sous la lourde ombre basilicale Que hantent encore des Eudes, des Adalberts, Dans les orfrois passés, Évêques qui ne bénissent pas les noyés anonymes, Anonymes, Non plus des corps, mais des outres, Qui vont outre, Le long des îles en forme de bateaux plats Avec, pour mâtures, des tuyaux de cheminées. Et les noyés vont outre. Mais arrête-toi aux parapets doctes Où, dans les boîtes, gît mainte anecdote, Et le grimoire à tranches rouges sur lequel le platane Fait pleuvoir ses feuilles, Il se peut que, là, tu découvres une bonne écriture: Car tu n’ignores pas la vertu des runes Ni le pouvoir des signes tracés sur les lames. For a long, long while M. Roux traced the course of this marvellous river, nor did he finish his recital till they reached the dean’s doorstep. “That’s very good,” said M. Compagnon, for he had no grudge against literature, though for want of practice he could barely distinguish between a line of Racine and a line of Mallarmé. But M. Bergeret said to himself: “Perhaps, after all, this is a masterpiece?” And, for fear of wronging beauty in disguise, he silently pressed the poet’s hand. V As he came out of the dean’s house, M. Bergeret met Madame de Gromance returning from Mass. This gave him great pleasure, for he always considered that the sight of a pretty woman is a stroke of good luck when it comes in the way of an honest man, and in his eyes Madame de Gromance was a most charming woman. She alone, of all the women in the town, knew how to dress herself with the skilful art that conceals art: and he was grateful to her for this, as well as for her carriage that displayed the lissom figure and the supple hips, mere hints though they were of a beauty veiled from the sight of the humble, poverty-stricken scholar, but which could yet serve him as an apposite illustration of some line of Horace, Ovid or Martial. His heart went out towards her for her sweetness and the amorous atmosphere that floated round her. In his mind he thanked her for that heart of hers that yielded so easily; he felt it as a personal favour, although he had no hope at all of ever sunning himself in the light of her smile. Stranger as he was in aristocratic circles, he had never been in the lady’s house, and it was merely by a stroke of extraordinary luck that someone introduced him to her in M. de Terremondre’s box, after the procession at the Jeanne d’Arc celebrations. Moreover, being a wise man with a sense of the becoming, he did not even hope for closer acquaintance. It was enough for him to catch a chance glimpse of her fair face as he passed in the