In the great ponds of Marot, and in the lakes of Lomervo--immense liquid plains, deep and surrounded in their whole circumference by a forest of green rushes, water-lilies, flags, and many other aquatic plants, forming a wall of verdure--the enormous quantity of fish of every kind is almost incredible. Nor is this extraordinary, for the waters of at least a dozen streams from the mountains, which swarm with life, fall into these vast reservoirs, and they are only fished once in every five years. This is a delectable spot for fishermen; but, on the other hand, as the value of these sheets of water is well understood by their proprietors, they are sharply looked after by them and their keepers, and it is almost as difficult to find an opportunity of throwing a line during the day, as it is for a poacher to throw a casting net on a moonlight night. Nevertheless, as the appropriation of other people's property has an exquisite charm for some temperaments,--as a stolen apple to a child's palate is much more delightful than one that is not--the demon of acquisitiveness is always leaning over a man's shoulder,--that is to say, a poacher's shoulder, or even that of a gentleman with poaching tastes and inclinations,--to breathe in his ear bad advice. As to the peasants in the neighbourhood, they are always consulting together, or inventing some method by which they may circumvent the proprietors and appropriate their fish to themselves. One of the happiest discoveries of the kind I ever heard of,--not the most recent but the best,--is the following. Every person in the possession of a cottage, possesses also a few ducks and geese, which paddle about their humble habitations. A man who has an itching for the thing, and who desires to become a pond-skimmer, as they are called, carefully selects from his squadron of _palmipedes_, the strongest, the most intelligent duck or goose of the party; his choice made, he immediately sets to work to give him the education befitting a bird destined for so honourable and diplomatic an employment.