FLOWING WATER. 135 



the water, which they call Sisymhrivm nasturtium, and the 

 yellow gillyflower, which grows on old walls, are, excepting in 

 some very trifling details,- one and the same thing : the de- 

 scription they give of the two plants is almost identical. 



There is an indefinable charm in the aspect and the noise 

 of waters. There are people who pretend to be serious, because 

 they go through their follies with a frowning air, and in 

 clothes of certain colours, — who pretend exclusively to be 

 grave, because their childishnesses only cause others to laugh. 

 These people consider it a sign of idiocy to look at and watch 

 flowing water. I here declare that it is an occupation that 

 has a angular attraction for me, and is one of those to which 

 I abandon myself with the greatest ardour. Flowing water is I 

 at once a picture and a music, which causes to flow at the 

 same time from my brain, like a limpid and murmuring ' 

 rivulet, sweet thoughts, charming reveries, and melancholy 

 remembrances. 



There are not so many watchers of flowing waters as is 

 generally imagined. Such a one passes an hour with his 

 elbow on the parapet of a bridge, and watches an angler, 

 looks at the horses which draw a barge, or both looks at and 

 listens to the pretty washing-maidens singing. But to recline, 

 buried in deep grass in bloom, under the blue-leafed willows, 

 follow with the eye a river or a rivulet, look at the reeds it 

 bends in its course, and the grass it bears away with it, the 

 green dragon-flies which alight upon the rosy blossoms of the 

 flowering reed, or on the white or violet flowers of the 

 Sagittarius, or on the little white anemones, blooming over a 

 large carpet of verdure, — verdure like the green hair of a 

 naiad, — and to see nothing hut thai; to listen to the brushing 

 of their gauze wings, and the murmuring of the water against 

 the banks, and the noise of a breathing of wind among the 

 leaves of the willows, and hear nothing hut that; to forget 

 everything else, to feel one's heart filled with unspeakable 

 joy, to feel one's soul expand and blossom in the sun, like the 

 little blue flowers of the forget-me-not and the rosy blossoms 

 of the flowering reed; to be sensible of no desire and of no 

 fear but that of seeing a large white cloud, which is rolling 

 up from the horizon, ascend in the heavens and conceal the 

 gun for a time; — that is what I call looking at flowing water, 



