As for the river itself, its waters stretch out joyous and splendid;
the rising sun pours upon its breast a long streamlet of gold; the
breeze covers it with scales; its eddies stretch themselves, and
tremble like an awaking serpent, and, when the billow heaves them, you
seem to see the striped flanks, the tawny cuirass of a leviathan.
Indeed, at such moments it seems that the water must live and feel; it
has a strange look, when it comes, transparent and somber, to stretch
itself upon a beach of pebbles; it turns about them as if uneasy and
irritated; it beats them with its wavelets; it covers them, then
retires, then comes back again with a sort of languid writhing and
mysterious lovingness; its snaky eddies, its little crests suddenly
beaten down or broken, its wave, sloping, shining, then all at once
blackened, resembles the flashes of passion in an impatient mother,
who hovers incessantly and anxiously about her children, and covers
them, not knowing what she wants and what fears.
Presently a cloud has covered the heavens, and the wind has risen.
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