raiment, pleasant to look at, and in front of them were several young men
valiantly rowing, or, rather, digging their short sculls into the water,
as if they were trying to knock the brains out of some fluvial monsters
endeavouring to capture the youth and loveliness under the awning.

Having reached that part of the river which was nearest Riberac, I had to
find a place where the boat could be left, and where it would be safe from
the enterprise of boys--a bad invention in all countries. It is just,
however, to the French boy to say that he is not quite so fiendish out of
doors as the English one; but he makes things even by his conduct at home,
where he conscientiously devotes his animal spirits to the destruction of
his too-indulgent parents.

My difficulty was solved by a kind butcher, whose garden ran down to the
water. He let me chain the boat to one of his trees, and he took our fowl,
which was intended for lunch next day, and put it into his meat-safe--an
excellent service, for the drainage of his slaughter-house, emptying into
the river by the side of the boat, was enough to make even a live fowl lose
its freshness in a single night. We were soon settled in a comfortable inn
that prided itself, not without reason, upon its _cuisine_. Here we had a
_friture_ of gudgeons from the Dronne, which is famous throughout a wide
region for the quality of these and other fish.

The next morning I bought a saucepan, a melon, and grapes--which were
already ripe, although the date was the 9th August. Thus laden, we returned
to the boat and to the kindly butcher, who gave us our fowl wrapped up, not
in a newspaper as we had left it, but in a sheet of spotless white paper.
Having refilled our bottles, some with water, others with wine, we parted
from our hospitable acquaintance with pleasant words, and were afloat again
before the hour of eight. We had a serious wetting at the first weir, but