The couple ambled slowly down to where a skiff called the Madeleine was ready. Before embarking, however, they stopped to kiss once more, much to the amusement of the audience gathered on the bridge. Finally, Monsieur Paul took up the oars and set off after the others also making for La Grenouillère.

When they arrived it was getting on for three and here too the vast floating café was swarming with people. It is in effect one huge raft with a tarpaulin roof supported by wooden columns. It is connected to the charming island of Croissy by two narrow footbridges, one of which runs right through to the centre of the café itself. The other connects at the far end with a tiny islet where a single tree grows and which is nicknamed the Pot-de-Fleurs. From there it connects with the land again via a bathing pool.

Monsieur Paul moored his boat alongside the café, climbed up to its balustrade then, holding his girl’s two hands, guided her up also. They entered, found a place for two at the end of a table and sat down opposite each other.

Lining the towpath on the opposite side of the river was a long string of vehicles. Fiacres4 alternated with the flashy carriages of gay young men-about-town. The first were lumbering great hulks whose bodywork crushed the springs beneath and to which were harnessed broken-down old hacks with drooping necks. The other carriages were streamlined, with light suspension and fine, delicate wheels. These were drawn by horses with slender, straight, strong legs, heads held high and bits snowy with foam. Their solemn, liveried drivers, heads held stiffly inside huge collars, sat ramrod straight with their whips resting on their knees.

The river banks were crowded with people coming and going in different kinds of configurations: family parties, groups of friends, couples and individuals. They idly plucked at blades of grass, wandered down to the water’s edge then climbed back up to the path. Having reached a certain spot they all congregated to wait for the ferryman whose heavy boat plied constantly back and forth, depositing passengers on the island.

The branch of the river, incidentally called the dead branch, which this floating bar dominates, seemed asleep, so slowly did the current move there. Flotillas of gigs, skiffs, canoes, pedaloes and river craft of all kinds streamed over the still water, mingling and intersecting, meeting and parting, running foul of each other, stopping, and with a sudden jerk of their oarsmen’s arms and a tensing of their muscles, taking off again, darting this way and that like shoals of red and yellow fish.