Hour after hour will the adventurous bathers continue in the water; dancing, singing, and talking, while the advancing waters dash, splash, and foam all round them, exciting peals of laughter and screams of delight.
Separated by a high partition, and at a little distance, overlooked, however, by the strollers in the gardens above, is the gentlemen's compartment.

These bathers usually run along a high platform, considerably raised, and leap into the sea beneath them; diving down, and re-appearing, much to the amusement of each other; while a guide sits on a floating platform near, ready to lend assistance, or give instruction in natation, if required.
The season, we understood, had been particularly brilliant this year, and was scarcely yet over; though the ball-room and reading-rooms were less crowded than a few weeks before, when we were told that all that was gay and splendid in France _et l'Etranger_ was to be seen beneath the striped canopies of the sea-baths of La Rochelle.

Certainly a more enjoyable place cannot be found anywhere; and I was not surprised that anything so rare and really comfortable and agreeable should meet with success.

With any of the brilliant _toilettes_ which were described to me I did not, however, meet; as all the bathers I saw were in cloaks and slouch bonnets, and the company we met appeared by no means distinguished; peasants forming a great proportion.

However, the season was nearly over, and one could not expect to see the _elegans_ so late; but I have always observed that the accounts I have heard of the brilliancy of French fashionable meetings are by no means borne out by the reality.