Paul rose. ‘Come on then,’ he muttered before they too set off. The night was dark and the sky full of stars. Around them the air was still hot and the atmosphere heavy with seething, unseen activity. The warm breeze caressed their faces, its hot breath stifling their own and making them gasp slightly. The skiffs set off, each with a Venetian lantern in the prow. It was too dark to see anything of the boats themselves except for the little patches of colour in the night bobbing and dancing like frenzied glow-worms. Voices sounded from the shadows on all sides as the young couple’s skiff glided gently along. Sometimes when another overtook they would catch the flash of the oarsman’s white-jerseyed back illuminated by his lantern. As they came round the bend of the river, La Grenouillère came into sight in the distance.

In gala mood, the place was decorated with bunting and with strings, clusters and garlands of fairy lights. On the surface of the Seine large barges moved slowly about, representing domes, pyramids and all kinds of monuments picked out in variously coloured lights. Illuminated festoons hung down as far as the water itself, and here and there an enormous red or blue lantern suspended from an invisible rod hung like a huge star in the sky.

All these illuminations shone on the café and floodlit the great trees on the bank whose trunks stood out pale grey and whose leaves were milky green against the deep, pitch black of the fields and of the sky. A band consisting of five local players blared shrill, syncopated music across the water and, hearing it, Madeleine began to sing along. She wanted to go in right away. Paul would have preferred to make a tour of the island first but had to give in. The clientèle had thinned out a little by this time, still consisting mostly of boatmen with the odd sprinkling of middle-class couples and a few young men flanked by girls. The director and organizer of the can-can6 strutted in his faded black suit and cast round the audience the world-weary, professional eye of a cheap music-hall master of ceremonies. Paul was relieved to see that Big Pauline and her chums were nowhere to be seen.

People were dancing. Couples faced each other and capered about madly, kicking their legs as high as their partners’ noses. The women, who appeared to have double-jointed legs and hips, leapt about in a frou-frou of lifted skirts, flashing their knickers and kicking their legs up over their heads with amazing agility. They wriggled their bellies and shook their bosoms, spreading about them the powerful smell of female flesh in sweat. The males squatted like toads in front of them making faces and obscene gestures. They cavorted and turned cartwheels, posturing meanwhile in hideous parody, as one strapping maid and two waiters served the audience drinks.