winter #2

"I looked out, and beyond his heavy profile, which was grey--from fatigue and from the light of the sky above us. The river was swollen and yellow. Nothing moved on the river. Barges were tied up along the banks. The island of the city widened away from us, bearing the weight of the Cathedral; beyond this, dimly, through speed and mist, one made out the individual roofs of Paris; their myriad, squat chimney stacks very beautiful and varicolored under the pearly sky. Mist clung to the river, softening that army of trees, softening those stones, hiding the city's dreadful corkscrew alleys and dead-end streets, clinging like a curse to the men who slept between the bridge--one of whom flashed by beneath us, very black and lone, walking along the river."