would reply _yes_, to my great regret: for I foresaw the time when Trouville would become another Dieppe or Boulogne or Ostend. I was not mistaken. Alas! Trouville has now ten inns; and land which could be bought at a hundred francs the arpent,[1] to-day fetches five francs per foot. One day among these venturesome bathers, these wandering tourists, these navigators without compass, there arrived a man of twenty-eight to thirty years of age, who gave out that his name was Beudin and that he was a banker. On the very evening of his arrival I was bathing a long distance off in the sea, when about ten yards from me, on the crest of a wave, I perceived a fish which realised the dream of Marécot in the _Ours et le Pacha_--that is to say, it was a huge enormous fish such as one scarcely ever sees, the like of which many never have seen. Had I possessed a little more vanity, I might have taken it for a dolphin and imagined it had taken me for another Arion; but I simply took it for a fish of gigantic proportions, and, I confess, its proximity disturbed me--I set to work to swim to the shore as hard as I could. I was a good swimmer, in those days, but my neighbour, the fish, could swim still better; accordingly, without any apparent effort, it followed me, always keeping an equal distance from me. Two or three times, feeling fatigued--mostly from want of breath--I thought of taking to my feet, but I was afraid of becoming nervous if I found too great a depth of water beneath me. I therefore continued to swim until my knees ploughed into the sand. The other swimmers were looking at me in astonishment; my fish was following me as though I held it in leash. When I got to the point of touching the sand with my knees I stood up. My fish made somersault after somersault and seemed overjoyed with satisfaction. I turned round and looked at it more closely and calmly. I saw it was a porpoise. Instantly I ran to Mother Oseraie's house. I ran through the village just as I was, in my bathing drawers. Although Mother Oseraie was not very impressionable, she was not accustomed to receive travellers in so light a costume and she uttered a cry. "Don't mind me, Mother Oseraie," I said to her, "I have come to get my gun." "Good Lord!" she said, "are you going to hunt in the happy hunting fields?" Had I been in less of a hurry, I would have stopped and complimented her on her wit; but I only thought of the porpoise. Upon the stairs I met Madame de la Garenne; the staircase was very narrow and I drew aside to let her pass. I thought of asking how her husband and son were, but I reflected that the moment for holding a conversation was ill-chosen. Madame de la Garenne passed by and I flew into my room and seized hold of my carbine. The chamber-maid was making my bed. "Ah! monsieur, instead of taking your gun hadn't you better take some clothes?"