“O waves, what mournful tragedies ye know
   —­Deep waves, the dread of kneeling mothers’ hearts! 
   Ye tell them to each other as ye roll
   On flowing tide, and this it is that gives
   The sad despairing tones unto your voice
   As on ye roll at eve by mounting tide.”

Well, I think that the stories whispered by the slender reeds, with their little soft voices, must be more sinister than the lugubrious tragedies told by the roaring of the waves.

But as you have asked for some of my recollections, I will tell you of a singular adventure that happened to me ten years ago.

I was living, as I am now, in Mother Lafon’s house, and one of my closest friends, Louis Bernet who has now given up boating, his low shoes and his bare neck, to go into the Supreme Court, was living in the village of C., two leagues further down the river.  We dined together every day, sometimes at his house, sometimes at mine.

One evening as I was coming home along and was pretty tired, rowing with difficulty my big boat, a twelve-footer, which I always took out at night, I stopped a few moments to draw breath near the reed-covered point yonder, about two hundred metres from the railway bridge.

It was a magnificent night, the moon shone brightly, the river gleamed, the air was calm and soft.  This peacefulness tempted me.  I thought to myself that it would be pleasant to smoke a pipe in this spot.  I took up my anchor and cast it into the river.

The boat floated downstream with the current, to the end of the chain, and then stopped, and I seated myself in the stern on my sheepskin and made myself as comfortable as possible.  There was not a sound to be heard, except that I occasionally thought I could perceive an almost imperceptible lapping of the water against the bank, and I noticed taller groups of reeds which assumed strange shapes and seemed, at times, to move.

The river was perfectly calm, but I felt myself affected by the unusual silence that surrounded me.  All the creatures, frogs and toads, those nocturnal singers of the marsh, were silent.

Suddenly a frog croaked to my right, and close beside me.  I shuddered.  It ceased, and I heard nothing more, and resolved to smoke, to soothe my mind.  But, although I was a noted colorer of pipes, I could not smoke; at the second draw I was nauseated, and gave up trying.  I began to sing.  The sound of my voice was distressing to me.  So I lay still, but presently the slight motion of the boat disturbed me.  It seemed to me as if she were making huge lurches, from bank to bank of the river, touching each bank alternately.  Then I felt as though an invisible force, or being, were drawing her to the surface of the water and lifting her out, to let her fall again.  I was tossed about as in a tempest.  I heard noises around me.  I sprang to my feet with a single bound.  The water was glistening, all was calm.