They were of fantastic architecture--these
Cottages where well-to-do citizens of Amiens used to come for week-
ends of boating and fishing--and their garden gates at the end of
wooden bridges over back-waters were of iron twisted into the shapes
of swans or flowers, and there were snails of terra-cotta on the
chimney-pots, and painted woodwork on the walls, in the worst taste,
yet amusing and pleasing to the eye in their green bowers. I remember
one called Mon Idee, and wondered that any man should be proud of such
a freakish conception of a country house. They were abandoned during
the war, except one or two used for casual rendezvous between French
officers and their light o' loves, and the tow-path was used only by
stray couples who came out for loneliness, and British soldiers
walking out with French girls. The market-gardeners punted down the
river in long, shallow boats, like gondolas, laden high with cabbages,
cauliflowers, and asparagus, and farther up-stream there was a boat-
house where orderlies from the New Zealand hospital in Amiens used to
get skiffs for an hour's rowing, leaning on their oars to look at the
picture of the cathedral rising like a mirage beyond the willows and
the encircling water, with fleecy clouds above its glittering roof, or
lurid storm-clouds with the red glow of sunset beneath their wings.
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