by Louisa Stuart Costello (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.8 #199 (14 Jan 1854).
When I fixed my abode, in October last, in the Hôtel des Carmes in the street of the same name, which runs through the town of Rouen, piercing it from the broad Quai du Havre to the weird old tower of Philip Augustus on the Boulevard Beauvoisine, I had not taken the well known fact into consideration that, if the season be wet anywhere, the rain has a peculiar privilege of coming down into the basin of Rouen. For a whole month that I remained there it rained every day, more or less—but generally more; for an hour in the middle of the day, it would sometimes clear and allow the possibility of a pedestrian reaching the cathedral or Saint Ouen; and, amidst the grove-like aisles of either of these, the most beautiful churches in France, endeavouring to forget the ennui of a solitude into which he had rashly betrayed himself.
Probably there is no city in Europe which has been longer in getting rid of its antiquity and its dirt than Rouen, but it has at last advanced considerably in that way. For instance, to form the magnificent street, which after several changes of dynasty since it was first begun is now called La Rue Impériale, no less than six narrow streets of high striped houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had to be demolished. The street, as wide as Picadilly in London, is now nearly completed, and would be quite so, but for the opposition of an obstinate mill-owner whose ancestors for several centuries before him may have possessed his mill on the subterranean stream, whose black waters can be perceived from a parapet above the footway, and from whence he refuses to move without receiving almost the weight of his domicile in francs, in exchange for his filthy dilapidated black and yellow striped tenement. Just opposite this unsightly pile of building, beneath which the dragon of Saint Romain, so celebrated for his ravages in monkish days, might well have hidden himself in the sable waters, is a fine range of new houses in the Parisian style, much disgraced by the vicinity. A few steps further, in a vast square, rises high in air the white and fairy-like structure of the newly restored church of Saint Ouen, the boast of Normandy. All that presents itself to the stranger's eye on this side is new and clean and freshly decorated. There are new iron gates to the pretty, freshly arranged garden which surrounds the church, newly painted seats under the trees, generally dripping with the heavy rain drops, hanging on their last leaves, but if you advance to the edge of the garden, and observe the remaining ends of the streets which have been cleared away to afford space for these parterres and avenues and gold fish fountains, you recognise the Rouen of the Regent Bedford.
As no one can help being an antiquary in the city of a hundred towers, as Rouen has been called, and as the stranger has nothing more amusing on his mind than speculating on old stones, I allowed myself to indulge in many dreamy speculations. But in vain had I examined the huge posts at the entrance of the hotel court to convince myself that they were part of the ancient temple of Roth; I was obliged to believe what the old woman who sold hot cakes opposite told me, that they were recently put there to guard the foot passenger in the absence of the pavement, which is some day to beautify the street; in vain had I hoped in the Rue de Fossés Louis VIII., close by, to discover a tourelle or a buttress which would tell a tale. I was forced to give up all thoughts of times gone by as I ascended the gaily ornamented flight of steps leading to the coffee-room of the hotel where usually stood my smart hostess and her smarter daughter, glittering in mosaic gold, and blossoming in the gay artificial flowers for which Rouen is famous.
The room assigned me looked to the street, and was a lively, noisy, tawdry chamber, with nothing old about it. Though I knew that every step I took along the galleries which led to countless bed-rooms and dining-halls, was over the site of the old convent of Carmelites of the time of Joan of Arc, yet it was but too evident that not a plank, a brick, or a stone of the modern building had the remotest connexion with the middle ages.
The great fair of Saint Romain or the Pardon was approaching, and the town by degrees became filled with merchants from every part of France whose commodities were to be exposed for sale; but chiefly the proprietors of whole troops of diminutive Norman horses and ponies intended for sale came pouring in from the towns and villages; all these required domiciles, and the Hôtel des Carmes had always been the favourite resort of most of them, owing to its central position. Application was made to me to give up my large chamber to claimants who were content to sleep four in a room rather than forego the convenience of the house to which they were accustomed, and whose table d'hôte had a good reputation. I resisted for some time, much to the annoyance of an ugly chambermaid and an insinuating waiter, until, one morning, I was suddenly favoured by a visit from the smart daughter of my landlady in person, who, dressed with even more brilliancy than usual and arrayed in her most winning smiles, came to expostulate with me on the want of consideration I displayed in preferring my own comfort to that of the estimable horsedealers, whose right it had long been to take up their abode beneath her roof. "Madame," she remarked, "can have another room infinitely more suitable to her, out of the noise and bustle of the street, and where her studies will be less interrupted: it is at the other side of the court looking into the charming garden which gives a view of the Palais de Justice, and offers many advantages of air and light. It is all that remains," continued the fair Léonie, with an arch look, "of the convent garden; and Madame, who is fond of antiquities, will not object, as most persons do, that it is dull and retired."
This last argument was conclusive, and I at once agreed to the fair Léonie's proposition of following her to look at the offered chamber, which I was to have in exchange for the one coveted by the more favoured horsedealers of the Fair.
Through a series of rooms so numerous that I thought I should never get to the end of them, Léonie tripped, jingling the keys with which she opened one after another, informing me that every one would be tenanted in a few hours. I followed, wondering where the journey would finish, when she turned suddenly down a narrow dark passage, and, mounting a little stair, emerged into an upper wooden gallery which ran along outside the house above a court yard, and presently arrived at a low doorway, giving entrance to a second passage darker than the first. Léonie, after descending a few stairs, stopped at a small portal at the end of this passage, and, turning the key in the rusty lock, threw open the door of a chamber—long, narrow, and meagrely furnished—which, however, looked rather cheerful as a blaze of sunshine seemed suddenly to have darted into it from a high church-like window at the extremity, to which she at once advanced; and, opening it to the fullest extent, exclaimed, "See what a charming prospect Madame will have from the chapel-room, as we call this pièce."
I was obliged to confess that there was something attractive about the appearance of the garden below, neglected though it was. Far above the level of the street we had left on the other side, it could be reached from this room by a flight of stone steps descending from the window.
The sun was glittering on dripping trees and flowers grouped around a broken fountain in the middle of this hanging garden, into which no windows besides this one looked, for, on one side was the blank wall of a sugar-refinery, and on the other were the striped gables of several ancient houses whose fronts looked into the narrow Rue des Fossés. The garden-wall partly shut out the opposite hovels and only allowed the mysteries of their upper stories to be seen, where rickety balconies high in air hung from black windows supporting pots of flowers and bird-cages, in the midst of rags hung out to dry. Several spires of churches with delicate tracery, peered above the roofs of distant manufactories, whose high, singularly-shaped chimneys formed grotesque figures against the sky; some lofty trees, growing in the gardens attached to some of the numerous houses, broke the lines of buildings rather gracefully; and, towering over one mass of spreading foliage, the beautiful lacework of the parapet of that portion of the Palais de Justice built by George d'Amboise, the minister of Louis the Twelfth, and the small ornamented pinnacles which, surmount it, finished the prospect.
I did not disagree with Mademoiselle Léonie when she insisted that the position of this secluded chamber was in its favour; and to my objections that the floor was paved with dingy red brick and had no carpet—and that there were no curtains to the two windows, one of immense size, and one small—she replied, that an hour would remedy all defects, and make it a very pattern of comfortable.
"Look," she added, "what fine cupboards you have too! This one alone is large enough for all your trunks and books. And into this you could even move the bed itself, if you pleased."
It was quite true that the closets were singularly large, dark, and lofty, and that their hinges creaked dismally as they were thrown open for my inspection.
"Really," continued Léonie, seeing that I appeared tolerably satisfied, "I do not know that we are right in giving up so convenient a chamber when the house is about to be so full, but, to oblige Madame, we will not be particular."
However bright this model of a room might have looked when I first visited it, it had another aspect on the day succeeding that on which I was installed within it. The rain had descended in torrents ever since, and none of the dark nooks in which it abounded looked the livelier for there being no fire because the huge chimney smoked. I did not look much at my prospect, but occupied myself with a pile of folios, which the liberality of the authorities of Rouen had supplied me with, for certain researches, from the richly endowed public library.
I soon began to find that the quiet of my chamber had not been exaggerated: not a sound reached me from without, and, except when I opened the door of the passage which separated me from the world behind, to descend into day—which was a rare event—no distant murmur from the bustling department on the other side of the court came upon my ear.
I had been three days in my new domicile. It was on the third night of my occupancy, that as I sat reading by two candles placed in high heavy bronze candlesticks, like those of an altar, a low sound, as of a person nearly choked, which seemed to issue from the huge closet at my back, disturbed my studies. I started, looked up, and glanced round me into the dreary space; my hearselike bed, shrouded by dark red curtains, confined by a coronet with feathers which had once been gaily gilt, but was now dim and dingy, stood shadowy in its recess; my view next took in a clumsy commode with numerous drawers and a grey marble top, on which stood a clock of the period of the Renaissance, rather a valuable relic, but tarnished and with a broken face: the cracked porcelain circles for the numbers that mark the gliding hours, looking like so many staring inquisitive eyes. As I marked these things, the voice of my only companion informed me that it was eleven o'clock, and as the last sound of the communication died away I again heard the same hoarse, unpleasant sound from the interior of my closet. I got up and opened the huge panelled door, which gave its customary creak, but there was nothing within from whence a sound could have proceeded. I sat down again, satisfied that the wind was rising, and that the night would be stormy.
Presently, I had resumed my reading, and had become absorbed in the history of Saint Romain, the popular Saint of Rouen, and the dragon which he subdued by his prayers, bound with his scarf, and gave in charge to the criminal who had consented to accompany him on his adventure. I read how the saint and the sinner dragged and lured the scaly monster along until the bridge over the Seine was reached, when Saint Romain, seizing the scarf which possessed holy virtue, suddenly flung the monster into the river. I paused to consider how it happened that the imaginative monk, who invented this legend, should have forgotten that no bridge of any kind existed over the Seine at Rouen until more than three hundred years after the miracle; and my thoughts fell into a train, representing the processions of yearly occurrence which, before the great Revolution, took place in Rouen in commemoration of the delivery from the dragon, and the pardon accorded to the criminal, as still shown in the painted windows of the Cathedral. The Cathedral itself next came before my mind as I had seen it in the morning, when I ventured among the umbrellas of the curious under the dripping trees, where the wooden sheds, filled with wares, are erected throughout the extent of the Boulevard Bonvreuil: I mentally walked along the line of toy shops, and hardware, china, and jewellery, until I paused at the Rue Chant-Oiseaux, where the old church of Saint Romain once stood—when again, close to my ear, the same gurgling sound came, as if from the keyhole of the great closet. I got up and stuffed it with paper, but I felt disturbed and nervous, and, closing my book, prepared for bed; previously, however, to retiring, I rang my bell, thinking to obtain a new supply of candles, as I observed that both those I had been reading by, were nearly burnt out, and I felt nervous at the idea of being without any, in case of not being able to sleep. But I rang in vain; not a creature answered my summons, neither the cross chambermaid nor the flippant waiter; and, after repeating the attempt without success, I resigned myself to the privation, and went to bed in the dark.
I had no sooner laid my head on the pillow, than a most remarkable change suddenly came over my solitary domicile. First of all, I heard a door shut with violence, as if at the end of the passage, where I was not aware that one existed. Presently there were confused voices and a heavy step, and a sound as though something were being dragged along, until a stoppage took place at my door. A glimmering light then shone through the wide crevices, which usually let more air than was pleasant into my room; and a rattle, as if an attempt were made to turn the key, ensued. I recollected, however, that the key was inside, and that I had turned it myself before I retired to bed.
I concluded that some newly arrived guest had mistaken his assigned dormitory, and I listened no more. But, all at once the glimmering light again appeared beneath the door—this time, of the large closet, which slowly opened, and I clearly and distinctly saw what seemed to me a man in a cloak, with a broad hat very much over his eyes, step out, and raising a lantern in his hand, which however threw his features into shade, gaze round the room. I was so amazed that I had no power to call out; but, still keeping my eyes fixed on the opening left by my two dark red curtains, I saw the man walk a few paces towards the large window, open it cautiously, and descend the steps which led from it into the garden. In a few moments he re-ascended, and as he seemed to have left his lantern below, his figure was merely a black shadow, which I still traced in the gloom advancing to the same closet; he entered it; there was a pause; and he re-appeared dragging something along, which he took to the steps. I plainly heard that at every one of them—and I counted six—a heavy dull sound was returned as his burthen descended, and it struck against them.
Nothing more occurred; but I confess to having been so uncomfortably nervous—not to say, terrified—that, though after looking long into the darkness to see the glimmer of the lantern again, I ended by being convinced that I had imagined the whole scene, I had still not the courage necessary to get up and grope towards the bell: excusing my not trying to do so, by reflecting that I had previously found it useless. At last I went to sleep, and in the morning, impressed with the idea that I had passed the night with the large window open, I advanced to close it, when I found to my surprise that it was shut, and the rusty bolt well fastened inside, as it had been during the three rainy days before; the curtain, faithfully placed by Mademoiselle Léonie, had not been disturbed since it was drawn by my own hand early in the evening; and as for the great closet—when I opened it, the hinges creaked as usual, and there was emptiness, but no outlet.
When the cross chambermaid brought my coffee, I ventured to remark that I had been disturbed by new arrivals in the night.
"Impossible," was her sharp reply, "no one arrived last night, and if they had, there is no room for them."
"Unless they have a fancy to sleep in the old fount in the garden," said I; "for, if I was not dreaming, I saw a traveller dragging his own portmanteau down those steps in search of such a lodging."
Catherine, as I said this, looked at me with an uneasy expression of countenance, but said nothing. I asked her why she did not come when I rang my bell.
"Because, after eleven o'clock," said she pertly, "it is time for every one to be asleep, and we are too tired to attend to bells. It is quite enough that Madame has seen it, without us poor servants being scared."
"Seen it!" I inquired with interest, "what do you mean, Catherine?"
But already the cross chambermaid was gone, and did not deign an explanation of her mysterious words.
The next morning was fine. Determined not to lose the opportunity of seeing something of the pretty country, I went out early to keep an appointment I had made with my slight acquaintance, Madame Gournay, whose grandchild was at nurse at Bois Guillaume about half a league from the town, and whom I had promised to accompany in her first walk over the charming hill and pretty fields which led to the cottage of the peasant who supplied her place to her daughter's infant. Like many French mothers, Madame Gournay the younger—as well as her husband, the organist of the cathedral—preferred the absence of a troublesome baby to its presence in their confined apartment in the town.
"It is better for the child's health," remarked the grandmother, "to be amongst the flowers and fields at Bois Guillaume than in the smoky streets of Rouen."
The beautiful, neat embowered spot we soon reached was so singularly clean and well built for a foreign village that it made me appreciate my companion's prudence, and when I saw the pretty tidy nurse whom we found playing with the baby, as it lay in its cot, I could not but acknowledge that it was likely to be better taken care of with Gustaire Braye than by its rather coquettish mamma at home.
Gustaire had a little son of her own who was also in the cottage, but in an outer chamber. An old woman was knitting beside him as the child scrambled backwards and forwards in a long crib, placed against the wall, in the midst of which it was fastened by the waist to a moveable board, which slid along as his struggles impelled it. No harm could happen to the child in its oddly contrived prison, but the position looked uncomfortable, and I could not help contrasting the two boys as I observed the superior care bestowed on the nursling.
The son of Gustaire Braye was a strange infant: it had a pair of rolling startling eyes, which were continually but without meaning fixed on the cot of its foster brother, seen through an open door; it had a large head, was very pale, and every now and then a shudder seemed to pass over it, which was succeeded by a restless movement in its railway. The old woman, from time to time, looked up from her knitting, and gave a glance towards her charge, but did not speak to it, nor did it utter any cry or attempt any sound like words; while the other child was laughing, crowing, and delighting the company in the cottage.
The visit paid, on our return towards Rouen I congratulated Madame Gournay on having found so respectable a nurse.
"Yes," said she, "we consider ourselves lucky, and so is poor Gustaire, and very grateful too to M. le Curé for recommending her; it is not every one would like to have to do with her, after all that has happened; but as I said to my daughter, the poor young woman was not to blame, though her evidence did cause the death of her father. But I forget," she continued, smiling, "you know nothing of the story."
I begged she would indulge my curiosity by relating to me the reason why so neat and pleasant looking a young woman as Gustaire should be avoided.
"As we descend to the Boulevard Beauvoisine," said Madame Gournay, "we shall pass by the Rue Chant-Oiseaux, which, a very few years ago, was quite in the fields, and at that time, where there now stand good stone houses, there used to be only wretched hovels. In one of these Gustaire's father, a widower, with three children, lived: he had, however, a few fields, and drove a little trade, chiefly in horses, which you must have observed by our fair is a rather extensive trade here. He was a man who was but little liked by his neighbours, whom he shunned in consequence, and was very frequently away in Brittany, of which province he was a native. Gustaire, though almost a child, took care of her two brothers, worked in the fields, and did more than a grown woman to keep the family comfortable; but her father was not fond of her, nor indeed of any of his children, and they would have been much happier without him, but that when he returned they lived better than usual, as he took care of himself, and generally had money.
"On one occasion when he came home, he brought with him a large sack of chestnuts, of which the boys were very fond, and which they so freely indulged in, that he at last, angrily, told Gustaire to lock up the remainder, so that there might be some left to be roasted, when he asked for them for his supper. She put the sack away, therefore, in the granary, and the disappointed urchins were foiled. One of them, however, finding where it was hidden, and unable to open the mouth which his sister had carefully tied up, cut a round hole with his knife, and abstracted as many chestnuts as his daring little hand could grasp. Gustaire, on finding this out, afraid to let her father know of the delinquency, mended the hole, and hid the bag in another place, after soundly rating the boy for his theft.
"There was a man named Flecher, a countryman of Gustaire's father, who had established himself at Rouen, as a workman at one of the cotton manufactories, and was known to be a bad character. He spent all the money he earned, which was considerable, in dissipation; he had been turned away from one factory, but, having a good deal of skill, he had not found any difficulty in getting a new engagement, and could have lived well but for his extravagance. This man took a fancy to Gustaire, though he was nearly as old as her father. The latter, thinking him well off, rather encouraged his suit, much to the young girl's annoyance, who had taken him in particular aversion; and who, besides that, felt inclined to listen to the addresses of a young man about her own age, who often helped her in her work, being a neighbour's son.
"Flecher and her father, Ivan Braye, became very great friends. From the time of their association, the cottage of the latter was frequently a scene of drunkenness and riot, to avoid which Gustaire would often run to the house of the curé with her knitting, and sit in the kitchen with the good father's bonne until she heard, by the loud singing of the friends as they descended the hills, that her father and his comrade were gone into the town to finish their orgies.
"One night, later than usual, she had left the curé's and returned home, when she found the door left open, a candle burning in the cottage kitchen, and the floor strewn with chestnuts. She suspected her brothers and went to the granary to see what depredations they had committed; to her vexation, she discovered that the sack was gone.
"Her father, for whom she waited until daylight, did not return, and as soon as the children were up, she scolded them for the renewal of their theft. Both protested that they were innocent, and that they had longed in vain for the forbidden fruit, the scattered remains of which they took care to appropriate. That same night, Gustaire sat up for her father, but neither he nor his friend Flecher came, nor did he return when several days were passed. She began to feel uneasy at this, as he generally mentioned, in however surly a way, when he intended to be absent long. Her brothers came in on the fourth day after he was gone, having been at the fair; and the news they had heard there, was, that Flecher had left the town, having quitted his employers at the cotton factory at Darnetal without notice. She was not sorry to hear this, but a vague uneasiness took possession of her mind.
"'There has been a horrid murder in the town,' said one of the boys, 'at least they say so, though nobody has been found; however, the police are looking out, and we shall soon have more news of it.'
"At this moment the curé's bonne arrived to look after Gustaire; surprised that she had not, for several evenings, paid her usual visit.
"'This is a sad business,' said she, 'the person supposed to be murdered is a distant cousin of M. le Curé; he had seen him at the fair, and had received a letter which he had brought from le Mans for him; he had a good deal of money, it was said, for he intended to make large purchases in Rouennerie, and as his stall of jewellery was very attractive, no one could fail to remark, when for two days he no longer came in the morning to open it. It was not known where he lodged in the town, but people getting uneasy, the police began to inquire, and it was found that he had slept in the Rue aux Juifs the last night he was seen; but no notice had been taken as to whether he left in the morning, for the house was so full of lodgers and in such a bustle that no one had time scarcely to think. Certain it is that he has not reappeared, and all the town thinks he has been murdered.'
"'Perhaps he is gone away with Flecher,' said Gustaire's eldest brother, 'for he lived in the Rue aux Juifs too, and he has run off no one knows where, and so has father too for that matter.'
"Excited by this account, Gustaire set out with her brothers and the curé's bonne, curious to know if anything new had been discovered, as an event of the kind was too unusual not to excite great interest. They soon reached the Palais de Justice, where a crowd was assembled, and on the countenances of many might be observed an alarmed expression which told that some new feature had appeared in the case.
"'The body of poor Marceau the jeweller has been found,' said a person, addressing the curé's bonne, 'in the well of the old convent garden, tied up in a sack; it is thought that this will lead to discovery, for the sack has two or three chestnuts in it, and has a round hole in one side which has been sewn up.'
"'Blessed Mary!' exclaimed Gustaire, with a sudden start. 'Why, that is the sack my father brought home, and which has just been stolen from me!'
"This exclamation of the young girl excited instant attention, and led, in fact, to the discovery of the whole affair. She was obliged to appear in evidence to prove that the sack had belonged to her father, which she was able to do without difficulty, and entirely unsuspicious that she was thus casting suspicion upon him. It was found that Ivan Braye and Flecher had been seen in company with Marceau, who appeared intoxicated, and that he had entered the lodging of the latter in the Rue aux Juifs; that the two had left early in the following morning without the jeweller, who was not afterwards seen. As Flecher had not returned, the proprietor of the tenement he occupied had resolved to re-let the room; and, on the visit of the police, a search was made, which disclosed the marks of what might have been a scuffle, in several pieces of broken furniture, and a torn curtain in the recess where the bed stood; but the police only picked up a chestnut on the floor. They searched among the tangled shrubs in a half-choked bit of garden to which from the room of Flecher a flight of stone steps led, and there, in the centre, found an old dried-up well, where the murdered man's body was discovered in the sack.
"Of course the suspicion which had fallen on the two absent men was confirmed by Gustaire's identification; and the vigilance of the police, after some delay, succeeded in discovering the route of both Flecher and Braye. They were taken at Saint Malo, just as they were about to embark for California. Flecher confessed to having counselled the deed; but asserted that the murder was committed by Braye, who, having premeditated it, had brought the sack from his own house; and he it was who had placed the body in it and then dragged it to the spot where it was found. He stated that they had made Marceau drink to excess, and that Braye had strangled him when in a state of insensibility; that they had robbed him, and then fled; that they had spent a great part of their booty, and with the remainder had intended to cross the seas in search of gold; that a quarrel had delayed them, and thus they had been overtaken.
"It is enough," continued Madame Gournay, "to tell you that both met their deserved fate; but, poor Gustaire's evidence having gone so far to condemn her worthless father, the circumstance preyed on her mind and almost destroyed her. By the kind care of the curé and his good bonne she recovered, and her young lover, who remained true throughout, did not object to take her as his wife in spite of the opposition of his family. The curé, however, managed it, and has always continued her friend. You observed her child—he is dumb and much afflicted, and it is to be hoped will be mercifully taken from her. But she is a good young woman, has quite recovered her health, her husband works hard and is a pattern of kindness to her, and we really saw no reason why she should not nurse our little Albert.
I thanked Madame Gournay for her story, and ventured to inquire the exact locality of the murder. She informed me that most of the houses in the neighbourhood had been taken down.
"You may, however," she added, "still find the spot, oddly enough, in the back part of the Hôtel des Carmes; the late proprietor bought the ground and built quite a new wing; he laid out the garden and put a fountain over the well. For a time, as it was pretty, nothing was said; but the servants began to fancy strange things—noises and ghosts and such nonsense—particularly in a certain room, which they insist is part of the original building, once the Convent, against the strong walls of which (too strong to take down), many of the old houses in the Rue aux Juifs were erected in former days. There is a flight of steps from what is called the chapel, but it is so changed that it would be ridiculous to say that it positively was so, except that there is still a window that looks like it. I believe the whole place, garden, fountain and all, is left now to neglect, as no one would care to inhabit so gloomy a room. The present mistress of the hotel, however, is capable of putting a stranger there in fair time when she is over full, and I think," said Madame Gournay, laughing, "you are lucky to have secured a room in the front that looks into the street."
I did not undeceive my acquaintance, nor did I say a word about the strange vision I had seen; but, on the same day, after my return from our walk, I removed to the Hôtel de Bordeaux on the Quai de Paris, where my cheerful room looked on the suspension bridge, and commanded a full view of all the shipping on the Seine.