On Thursday and Friday the fight against the ever-rising waters was continued with desperate energy. In spite of all that human skill and labor could accomplish, the Seine pushed its way over parapets and through barricades, flooding rapidly the _quais_ and adjoining quarters. By means of subways and sewers (channels opened to the river by man's hand and that had not existed in the seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century floods), districts far from the river suffered equally. Auteuil, Grenelle, Charenton, Bercy were submerged. On either side of the Trocadéro the palatial private homes of the _quais_ were in the Seine up to the second story. The river appropriated to itself the entire length of Cours-la-Reine from the Pont de l'Alma to the Pont de la Concorde, reached the fashionable restaurants at the foot of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, and partly surrounded the two palaces of Fine Arts, souvenirs of the Exposition of 1900. The streets between the Avenue des Champs-Elysées and the river formed a transplanted Venice.
Hotels and stores on the Rue de Rivoli, the Théâtre Français--and even the Opéra--found their heat and light cut off by the attack of the Seine. Far away from the _quais_, in the neighborhood of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Seine, following the subway tunnel, burst forth into the Place du Havre and the Cour de Rome. Hasty barricades were of no avail. One could hardly trust his eyes when he looked up the Boulevard Haussmann from the Opéra and saw boats flitting back and forth as far as Saint-Augustin and the Boulevard Malesherbes. On the Rive Gauche the aspect of Paris grew even more alarming. The Esplanade des Invalides and the Quai d'Orsay joined the Seine. Soldiers threw a pontoon bridge across the Esplanade for pedestrians. But taxi-cabs and buses were compelled to plunge into the water hub-high. We saw motor-drawn vehicles stalled because the water had reached their engines, while the old-fashioned _cochers_ went merrily by, proud of their superiority. All the people in _fiacres_ had to do was to put their feet up on the _cocher's_ box. The Chamber of Deputies and the Ministery of Foreign Affairs were approachable by boat. The angle formed by the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Quai d'Orsay and the Rue du Bac was all under water. In this angle the Rue d'Université and the Rue de Lille were practically inaccessible. We who lived in the Latin, Luxembourg and Montparnasse Quarters could reach the Seine only by the Rue Dauphine or the Boulevard Saint-Michel. For increasing torrents soon covered the Rue des Saints-Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de Seine. We had never realized before how the early builders of Paris, in their determination to stick to the river for purposes of defence, had reclaimed ground much lower than the flood level of the Seine, relying upon the masonry of the _quais_ to keep back the river. In modern times we have undermined the natural defences of the Rive Gauche by bringing our railways to the center of the city, by our sewers and by the subways. When you are on a Seine river-boat, you can see all along the river how we have opened up the city to floods. Paris, honeycombed underground, fell an easy prey to the fury of the river. The very skill that added to the material comfort and well-being of the city made Paris vulnerable when the unexpected and unprecedented happened.