"Boivin said, 'Have a little patience and we will reach the river bank.'

"We reached the river. Here there was an odor of mud and dirty water, and
the sun blazed down on the water so that it burned my eyes. I begged
Boivin to go under cover somewhere. He took me into a kind of shanty
filled with men, a river boatmen's tavern.

"He said:

"'This does not look very grand, but it is very comfortable.'

"I was hungry. I ordered an omelet. But to and behold, at the second
glass of wine, that beggar, Boivin, lost his head, and I understand why
his wife gave him water diluted.

"He got up, declaimed, wanted to show his strength, interfered in a
quarrel between two drunken men who were fighting, and, but for the
landlord, who came to the rescue, we should both have been killed.

"I dragged him away, holding him up until we reached the first bush where
I deposited him. I lay down beside him and, it seems, I fell asleep. We
must certainly have slept a long time, for it was dark when I awoke.
Boivin was snoring at my side. I shook him; he rose but he was still
drunk, though a little less so.

"We set out through the darkness across the plain. Boivin said he knew
the way. He made me turn to the left, then to the right, then to the
left. We could see neither sky nor earth, and found ourselves lost in the
midst of a kind of forest of wooden stakes, that came as high as our
noses. It was a vineyard and these were the supports. There was not a