We had hardly left the harbour when the steamer began to bounce and to pick its way from one wave to another, giving us the impression of a swing. I proved to be a miserable sailor and went below at once and put myself into the hands of the stewardess, who quickly placed a basin under my very nose. I lay prostrate on a sofa in the ladies’ saloon; my head was very bad and everything went round. What miserable creatures all my cabin companions were! woefully sick all of them. Sergy, much less liable to sea-sickness, remained on deck all the time. He came to see how I was and said I had better come up on deck, but I was too deadly ill even to answer him. It took us six hours to get to Dieppe. We looked ghostly when we landed on the pier, where a large crowd had assembled to see the passengers fresh from a rough channel passage. I was so happy to be on dry land. I would rather die than endure another half hour of sickness. We saw on the pier Mme. Kethoudoff, one of our Moscow friends, a French lady married to an Armenian. That couple was compelled to strictly fulfil the French proverb, _La parole est d’argent et le silence est d’or_, (speech is silver and silence is gold) as Mr. Kethoudoff does not speak a word of French, and his spouse completely ignores the Armenian language. Mme. Kethoudoff had settled at Dieppe for good. She received us with open arms when we stepped on shore, and carried us away to her own house, situated on the “Quai des Écluses.” I had not yet recovered from our rough passage and felt all the time as if the ground tottered under me. I tried not to think about the treacherous sea but couldn’t, for the ocean was there, just in front of our windows, in all its vastness. Mme. Kethoudoff had at dinner that day the _Vicaire du Pollet_, a rosy and plump curate. This gossip-loving priest was a great favourite among his lady parishioners, to whom he was very fond of confiding little bits of scandal. We took our after-dinner coffee on the balcony and saw the swing bridge giving passage to a Spanish vessel which was leaving the harbour. At nine o’clock in the evening a retreat was sounded from the neighbouring barracks. At the first beat of the drum the soldiers hastened up to their quarters from all parts of the town. In spite of Mme. Kethoudoff’s hospitality, we moved that same night to the Hôtel des Étrangers, where we shall feel ourselves more at home and independent. I lay in bed late next morning. After breakfast we went for a walk on the beach; the weather was rainy and the sea uniformly grey, nothing but furious waves around us. The monotony of this sea-shore unnerved me. We shall probably not make a long stay here. Neither is the bathing very agreeable at Dieppe; it only takes place at the hours of low water, and the bottom of the sea is so rough and stony that the bathers are obliged to put on sandals with very thick soles.