"Moi, m'sieur?" says Barty.
"Oui, toi!--comment dirais-tu, '_je pourrais vouloir_'?"
"Je dirais '_I vould can to vill_,'" says Barty, quite unabashed.
"A la bonne heure! au moins tu sais ta langue, toi!" says Pere
Brossard, and pats him on the cheek; while Barty winks at me, the
wink of successful time-serving hypocrisy, and Bonneville writhes
with suppressed delight.
What lives most in my remembrance of that summer is the lovely
weather we had, and the joy of the Passy swimming-bath every
Thursday and Sunday from two till five or six; it comes back to me
even now in heavenly dreams by night. I swim with giant side-strokes
all round the Ile des Cygnes between Passy and Grenelle, where the
Ecole de Natation was moored for the summer months.
Round and round the isle I go, up stream and down, and dive and
float and wallow with bliss there is no telling--till the waters all
dry up and disappear, and I am left wading in weeds and mud and
drift and drought and desolation, and wake up shivering--and such is
life.
As for Barty, he was all but amphibious, and reminded me of the seal
at the Jardin des Plantes. He really seemed to spend most of the
afternoon under water, coming up to breathe now and then at
unexpected moments, with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up
from the slimy bottom ten or twelve feet below--or a weed--or a
dead mussel.