'Forbidden in youth by parents and tutors alike the joys of paddling under pain of chastisement, the Archduchess Elizabeth appeared to find a zest in doing so now. Attended by a chosen lady-in-waiting (as a rule the dowager Marchioness of Lallah Miranda), she liked to slip off to one of the numerous basins or natural grottos in the castle gardens, where she would pass whole hours in wading blissfully about. Whilst paddling, it was her wont to run over those refrains from the vaudevilles and operas (with their many shakes and rippling cadenzi) in favour in her day, interspersed at intervals by such cries as: "Pull up your skirt, Marquise, it's dragging a little, my friend, below the knees..." or, "A shark, a shark!" which was her way of designating anything that had fins, from a carp to a minnow.'
from The Flower Beneath the Foot by Ronald Firbank (Chapter II)
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