each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the

accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I

decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get

wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my

body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my

paddle like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly amused by these

ebullitions. It gave him something else to look at besides clay

banks and willows.

All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places,

or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were

undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which

had been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have

changed its fancy, and be bent upon undoing its performance. What

a number of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the

innocence of its heart!

NOYON CATHEDRAL

Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain

surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with

its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral

with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, the tile roofs

seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the oddest disorder;

but for all their scrambling, they did not attain above the knees

of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. As

the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the market-

place under the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier and more

composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the

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