passed the doors of St. Germain L'Auxerrois.

And now we were skirting the Quai de l'Ecole, looking down upon the bath
known in those days as Molino's--a hugh, floating quadrangular
structure, surrounded by trellised arcades and rows of dressing-rooms,
with a divan, a cafe restaurant, and a permanent corps of cooks and
hair-dressers on the establishment. For your true Parisian has ever been
wedded to his Seine, as the Venetian to his Adriatic; and the Ecole de
Natation was then, as now, a lounge, a reading-room, an adjunct of the
clubs, and one of the great institutions of the capital.

Some bathers, earlier than ourselves, were already sauntering about the
galleries in every variety of undress, from the simple _calecon_ to the
gaudiest version of Turkish robe and Algerian _kepi_. Some were smoking;
some reading the morning papers; some chatting in little knots; but as
yet, with the exception of two or three school-boys (called, in the
_argot_ of the bath, _moutards_), there were no swimmers in the water.

With some of these loungers Mueller exchanged a nod or a few words as we
passed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed,
stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to a
popular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor buttons, red
sash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes. Mueller
introduced this romantic-looking person to me as "Monsieur Barbet."

"My friend, Monsieur Barbet," said he, "is the prince of
swimming-masters. He is more at home in the water than on land, and
knows more about swimming than a fish. He will calculate you the
specific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, and
is capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put to
the test."

"Monsieur can swim?" said the master, addressing me, with a nautical
scrape.

"I think so," I replied.

"Many gentlemen think so," said Monsieur Barbet, "till they find
themselves in the water."

"And many who wish to be thought accomplished swimmers never venture
into it on that account," added Mueller. "You would scarcely suppose," he
continued, turning to me, "that there are men here--regular _habitues_
of the bath--who never go into the water, and yet give themselves all
the airs of practised bathers. That tall man, for instance, with the
black beard and striped _peignoir_, yonder--there's a fellow who comes
once or twice a week all through the season, goe