ghtly veiled in the morning
mist, but with rays of sunlight falling on its roofs; its thousand squat
or pointed spires, light, fragile-looking, wrought like gigantic jewels;
its round or square towers topped with heraldic crowns; its belfries;
the numerous Gothic summits of its churches, overtopped by the sharp
spire of the cathedral, that surprising spike of bronze--strange, ugly,
and out of all proportion, the tallest in the world. Facing it, on the
other side of the river, rose the factory chimneys of the suburb of
Saint Serves--tall, round, and broadening at their summit. More numerous
than their sister spires, they reared even in the distant country, their
tall brick columns, and vomited into the blue sky their black and coaly
breath. Highest of all, as high as the second of the summits reared by
human labor, the pyramid of Cheops, almost level with its proud
companion the cathedral spire, the great steam-pump of La Foudre seemed
the queen of the busy, smoking factories, as the other was the queen of
the sacred edifices. Further on, beyond the workmen's town, stretched a
forest of pines, and the Seine, having passed between the two divisions
of the city, continued its way, skirting a tall rolling slope, wooded at
the summit, and showing here and there its bare bone of white stone.
Then the river disappeared on the horizon, after again describing a long
sweeping curve. Ships could be seen ascending and descending the stream,
towed by tugs as big as flies and belching forth thick smoke. Islands
were stretched along the water in a line, one close to the other, or
with wide intervals between them, like the unequal beads of a verdant
rosary.

The driver waited until the travelers' ecstasies were over. He knew from
experience the duration of the admiration of all the breed of tourists.
But when he started again Duroy suddenly caught sight of two old people
advancing towards them some hundreds of yards further on, and jumped
out, exclaiming: "There they are. I recognize them."

There were two country-folk, a man and a woman, walking with irregular
steps, rolling in their gait, and sometimes knocking their shoulders
together. The man was short and strongly built, high colored and
inclined to stoutness, but powerful, despite his years. The woman was
tall, spare, bent, careworn, the real hard-working country-woman who has
toiled afield from childhood, and has never had time to amuse herself,
while her husband has been jokin