The _Digue_ just mentioned is a high artificial seawall or embankment, faced with sloping stone on the sea side and surmounted by a broad boulevard--the Esplanade. It slopes gradually on the landward side, one row of stately hotels and lodging-houses facing directly on the Esplanade, while on the side streets the buildings drop each below the other until they reach the level of the town, which is some forty or fifty feet lower than the summit of the embankment. Here the fashionable crowds promenade at the proper times, while the unfashionable promenade all day long and far into the night. Even in July the sight is a most fascinating one, and the Bohemianism of the crowd and its diversity of national types most interesting. Here, as everywhere in Belgium, the cafés and hotels place their tables and chairs far out into the roadway, so that we can sit outdoors in the manner that the Madame so much enjoys and eat our dinner, or sip our coffee and cognac, while watching the ever-changing crowds go by. At Ostende the scale of expenses for everything, rooms, meals, service, pleasure, cigars, tips, and even for the English newspapers, increases or falls according to the proximity or remoteness of the _Digue_. If you are on top of it--look out! To Americans the charges, even in the finer big hotels, do not seem particularly excessive--though in August they are usually much higher than in July--but there is a constant succession of incidental expenses that make the voyager as a rule hurry more than once to the banker where his letter of credit can have another illegible notation made on it. Externally the hotels are very imposing and stately--making a brave show as one looks down the long line that extends for several miles from the harbour entrance westward to Westende and beyond half way to Nieuport. Within they are pretty much like all Belgian hotels of the better class. For the novelty of the thing we thought of renting one of the tiny _apartements meublés_, that, each with a charming broad window--usually open all day long like a piazza--look out directly upon the sea. The price was a thousand francs a month, which seemed too much for what was after all little more than one big room with an alcove. The landlady informed us that she attended to all the details of the _ménage_, cooking and serving the meals and providing maid service, but that messieurs must provide the provisions, both solid and liquid.