On reaching the Pont des Saints-Peres, Claude, in sheer despair, stopped short.  He had relinquished Christine’s arm, and had turned his face towards the point of the Cite.  She no doubt felt the severance that was taking place and became very sad.  Seeing that he lingered there obliviously, she wished to regain her hold upon him.

‘My dear,’ said she, ’let us go home; it’s time.  Jacques will be waiting for us, you know.’

But he went half way across the bridge, and she had to follow him.  Then once more he remained motionless, with his eyes still fixed on the Cite, on that island which ever rode at anchor, the cradle and heart of Paris, where for centuries all the blood of her arteries had converged amid the constant growth of faubourgs invading the plain.  And a glow came over Claude’s face, his eyes sparkled, and at last he made a sweeping gesture: 

‘Look!  Look!’

In the immediate foreground beneath them was the port of St. Nicolas, with the low shanties serving as offices for the inspectors of navigation, and the large paved river-bank sloping down, littered with piles of sand, barrels, and sacks, and edged with a row of lighters, still full, in which busy lumpers swarmed beneath the gigantic arm of an iron crane.  Then on the other side of the river, above a cold swimming-bath, resounding with the shouts of the last bathers of the season, the strips of grey linen that served as a roofing flapped in the wind.  In the middle, the open stream flowed on in rippling, greenish wavelets tipped here and there with white, blue, and pink.  And then there came the Pont des Arts, standing back, high above the water on its iron girders, like black lace-work, and animated by a ceaseless procession of foot-passengers, who looked like ants careering over the narrow line of the horizontal plane.  Below, the Seine flowed away to the far distance; you saw the old arches of the Pont-Neuf, browny with stone-rust; on the left, as far as the Isle of St. Louis, came a mirror-like gap; and the other arm of the river curved sharply, the lock gates of the Mint shutting out the view with a bar of foam.  Along the Pont-Neuf passed big yellow omnibuses, motley vehicles of all kinds, with the mechanical regularity of so many children’s toys.  The whole of the background was inframed within the perspective of the two banks; on the right were houses on the quays, partly hidden by a cluster of lofty trees, from behind which on the horizon there emerged a corner of the Hotel de Villa, together with the square clock tower of St. Gervais, both looking as indistinct as if they had stood far away in the suburbs.  And on the left bank there was a wing of the Institute, the flat frontage of the Mint, and yet another enfilade of trees.