The public was not all distinguished.  We often wondered where the people were who lived in the hotels (all very expensive) and villas, for, with very rare exceptions, it was the most ordinary petite bourgeoisie that one saw on the beach—­a few Americans, a great many fourth-rate English.  They were a funny contrast to the people who came for the Concours Hippique, and the Race Week.  One saw then a great influx of automobiles—­there were balls at the Casino and many pretty, well-dressed women, of both worlds, much en evidence.  The chatelains from the neighbouring chateaux appeared and brought their guests.

For that one week Boulogne was quite fashionable.  The last Sunday of the races was a terrible day.  There was an excursion train from Paris and two excursion steamers from England.  We were on the quay when the English boats came in and it was amusing to see the people.  Some of them had left London at six in the morning.  There were all sorts and kinds, wonderful sportsmen with large checked suits, caps and field glasses slung over their shoulders—­a great many pretty girls—­generally in white.  All had bags and baskets with bathing suits and luncheon, and in an instant they were swarming over the plage—­already crowded with the Paris excursionists.  They didn’t interfere with us much as we never went to the beach on Sunday.

F. was fishing all day with some of his friends in a pilot boat. (They brought back three hundred mackerel), had a beautiful day—­the sea quite calm and the fish rising in quantities.  C. and I, with the children, went off to the Hardelot woods in the auto.  We established ourselves on a hillside, pines all around us, the sea at our feet, a beautiful blue sky overhead, and not a sound to break the stillness except sometimes, in the distance, the sirene of a passing auto.  We had our tea-basket, found a nice clear space to make a fire, which we did very prudently, scooping out a great hole in the ground and making a sort of oven.  It was very difficult to keep the children from tumbling into the hole as they were rolling about on the soft ground, but we got home without any serious detriment to life or limb.

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The life in our quarter on the quais is very different, an extraordinary animation and movement.  There are hundreds of vessels of every description in the port.  All day and all night boats are coming in and going out:  The English steamers with their peculiar, dull, penetrating whistle that one hears at a great distance—­steam tugs that take passengers and luggage out to the Atlantic liners, lying just outside the digue—­yachts, pilot boats, easily distinguished by a broad white line around their hulls, and a number very conspicuously printed in large black letters on their white sails, “baliseurs,” smart-looking little craft that take buoys out to the various points where they must be laid.  One came in the other day with two large, red, bell-shaped buoys on her deck which