It was a lovely starlight night – they had just reached the top of the hill Villejuif, from whence Paris appears like a sombre sea tossing its millions of phosphoric waves into light – waves indeed more noisy, more passionate, more changeable, more furious, more greedy, than those of the tempestuous ocean, – waves which never rest as those of the sea sometimes do, – waves ever dashing, ever foaming, ever ingulfing what falls within their grasp.