in which coloured glass balls shone out like stars.  They walked on, leaving behind them the big barracks and the Hotel de Ville, and feeling much more interest in the Cite which appeared across the river, pent between lofty smooth embankments rising from the water.  Above the darkened houses rose the towers of Notre-Dame, as resplendent as if they had been newly gilt.  Then the second-hand bookstalls began to invade the quays.  Down below a lighter full of charcoal struggled against the strong current beneath an arch of the Pont Notre-Dame.  And then, on the days when the flower market was held, they stopped, despite the inclement weather, to inhale the scent of the first violets and the early gillyflowers.  On their left a long stretch of bank now became visible; beyond the pepper-caster turrets of the Palais de Justice, the small, murky tenements of the Quai de l’Horloge showed as far as the clump of trees midway across the Pont-Neuf; then, as they went farther on, other quays emerged from the mist, in the far distance:  the Quai Voltaire, the Quai Malaquais, the dome of the Institute of France, the square pile of the Mint, a long grey line of frontages of which they could not even distinguish the windows, a promontory of roofs, which, with their stacks of chimney-pots, looked like some rugged cliff, dipping down into a phosphorescent sea.  In front, however, the Pavillon de Flore lost its dreamy aspect, and became solidified in the final sun blaze.  Then right and left, on either bank of the river, came the long vistas of the Boulevard de Sebastopol and the Boulevard du Palais; the handsome new buildings of the Quai de la Megisserie, with the new Prefecture of Police across the water; and the old Pont-Neuf, with its statue of Henri IV. looking like a splash of ink.  The Louvre, the Tuileries followed, and beyond Grenelle there was a far-stretching panorama of the slopes of Sevres, the country steeped in a stream of sun rays.  Claude never went farther.  Christine always made him stop just before they reached the Pont Royal, near the fine trees beside Vigier’s swimming baths; and when they turned round to shake hands once more in the golden sunset now flushing into crimson, they looked back and, on the horizon, espied the Isle Saint Louis, whence they had come, the indistinct distance of the city upon which night was already descending from the slate-hued eastern sky.

Ah! what splendid sunsets they beheld during those weekly strolls.  The sun accompanied them, as it were, amid the throbbing gaiety of the quays, the river life, the dancing ripples of the currents; amid the attractions of the shops, as warm as conservatories, the flowers sold by the seed merchants, and the noisy cages of the bird fanciers; amid all the din of sound and wealth of colour which ever make a city’s waterside its youthful part.  As they proceeded, the ardent blaze of the western sky turned to purple on their left, above the dark line of houses, and the orb of day seemed to wait for them, falling gradually