Now the river would approach the side, and run griding along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open colza-fields among the trees.  Now it would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight.  Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue sky.  On these different manifestations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks.  The shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the stable meadows.  The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into communion with our eyes.  And all the while the river never stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to toe.

There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on the shivering of the reeds.  There are not many things in nature more striking to man’s eye.  It is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a silly human with alarm.  Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep in the stream.  Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river’s flux, or the miracle of its continuous body.  Pan once played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays upon these later generations down all the valley of the Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and the terror of the world.

The canoe was like a leaf in the current.  It took it up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph.  To keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying of the paddle.  The river was in such a hurry for the sea!  Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd.  But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded?  All the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of threescore years and ten.  The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows.  But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who stand still are always timid advisers.  As for us, we could have shouted aloud.  If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death’s contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us.  I was living three to the minute.  I was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream.  I have rarely had better profit of my life.