My apartment partly looked over the river and almost every time I opened my window, I could hear Edith Piaf belting out La Vie en Rose as a bateau mouche, crammed full of tourists, floated past my window.
For a few beautiful seconds, my heart beat alongside hers... and then she was gone, her little sparrow's voice drowned out by the man on the loudspeaker saying "Next stop Town Hall and sorry, but there are no toilet facilities on board this boat."
Despite its charm, the Seine has never been able to swim free of such splashes of scatology.
Until the late 19th Century one of the river's principal functions was to serve as the city's sewer, a job she carried out admirably, dutifully transporting dysentery and typhoid to any Parisian foolish enough to ingest her waters.
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