Meanwhile it had grown unbearably hot, the sparkling river looked like a blaze of fire, and the fumes of the wine were getting into their heads.  Monsieur Dufour, who had a violent hiccough, had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and the top of his trousers, while his wife, who felt choking, was gradually unfastening her dress.  The apprentice was shaking his yellow wig in a happy frame of mind, and kept helping himself to wine, and as the old grandmother felt drunk, she also felt very stiff and dignified.  As for the girl, she showed nothing, except a peculiar brightness in her eyes, while the brown skin on the cheeks became more rosy.

The coffee finished them off; they spoke of singing, and each of them sang, or repeated a couplet, which the others repeated frantically.  Then they got up with some difficulty, and while the two women, who were rather dizzy, were getting the fresh air, the two men, who were altogether drunk, were performing gymnastic tricks.  Heavy, limp, and with scarlet faces, they hung awkwardly onto the iron rings, without being able to raise themselves, while their shirts were continually threatening to leave their trousers, and to flap in the wind like flags.

Meanwhile, the two boating-men had got their skiffs into the water, and they came back, and politely asked the ladies whether they would like a row.

“Would you like one, Monsieur Dufour?” his wife exclaimed,—­“Please come!”

He merely gave her a drunken look, without understanding what she said.  Then one of the rowers came up, with two fishing-rods in his hand; and the hope of catching a gudgeon, that great aim of the Parisian shop-keeper, made Dufour’s dull eyes gleam, and he politely allowed them to do whatever they liked, while he sat in the shade, under the bridge, with his feet dangling over the river, by the side of the young man with the yellow hair, who was sleeping soundly close to him.

One of the boating men made a martyr of himself and took the mother.

“Let us go to the little wood on the Ile aux Anglias!” he called out, as he rowed off.  The other skiff went slower, for the rower was looking at his companion so intently, that he thought of nothing else, and his emotion paralyzed his strength, while the girl, who was sitting on the steerer’s seat, gave herself up to the enjoyment of being on the water.  She felt disinclined to think, felt a lassitude in her limbs, and a total abandonment of herself, as if she were intoxicated, and she had become very flushed, and breathed shortly.  The effects of the wine, which were increased by the extreme heat, made all the trees on the bank seem to bow, as she passed.  A vague wish for enjoyment and a fermentation for her blood, seemed to pervade her whole body, which was excited by the heat of the day; and she was also agitated by this tete-a-tete on the water, in a place which seemed depopulated by the heat, with this young man who thought her pretty, whose looks seemed to caress her skin, and whose looks were as penetrating and pervading as the sun’s rays.