no's?"

"Yes--don't you know Molino's--the large swimming-school by the Pont
Neuf. It's a glorious morning for a plunge in the Seine."

A plunge in the Seine! Now, given a warm bed, a chilly autumn morning,
and a decided inclination to quote the words of the sluggard, and
"slumber again," could any proposition be more inopportune, savage, and
alarming? I shuddered; I protested; I resisted; but in vain.

"I shall be up again in less time than it will take you to tell your
beads, _mon gaillard_" said Mueller the ferocious, as, having captured my
Napoleon, he prepared to go down and liquidate with number One Thousand
and Eleven. "And it's of no use to bolt me out, because I shall hammer
away till you let me in, and that will wake your fellow-lodgers. So let
me find you up, and ready for the fray."

And then, execrating Mueller, and Molino, and Molino's bath, and Molino's
customers, and all Molino's ancestors from the period of the deluge
downwards, I reluctantly complied.

The air was brisk, the sky cloudless, the sun coldly bright; and the
city wore that strange, breathless, magical look so peculiar to Paris at
early morning. The shops were closed; the pavements deserted; the busy
thoroughfares silent as the avenues of Pere la Chaise. Yet how different
from the early stillness of London! London, before the world is up and
stirring, looks dead, and sullen, and melancholy; but Paris lies all
beautiful, and bright, and mysterious, with a look as of dawning smiles
upon her face; and we know that she will wake presently, like the
Sleeping Beauty, to sudden joyousness and activity.

Our road lay for a little way along the Boulevards, then down the Rue
Vivienne, and through the Palais Royal to the quays; but long ere we
came within sight of the river this magical calm had begun to break up.
The shop-boys in the Palais Royal were already taking down the
shutters--the great book-stall at the end of the Galerie Vitree showed
signs of wakefulness; and in the Place du Louvre there was already a
detachment of brisk little foot-soldiers at drill. By the time we had
reached the open line of the quays, the first omnibuses were on the
road; the water-carriers were driving their carts and blowing their
shrill little bugles; the washer-women, hard at work in their gay,
oriental-looking floating kiosques, were hammering away, mallet in hand,
and chattering like millions of magpies; and the early matin-bell was
ringing to prayers as we