raveller, whose luggage consisted of a stick and an old pair of
boots. The man was not pleasant to be near in any way, and he was
evidently not at all satisfied with the amount of room I allowed him. He
kept discontentedly and doggedly pushing his spare pair of boots farther
and farther into my two-thirds of the seat, and once or twice was on the
point of a protest, in which case I was prepared to tell him that as he
filled the whole banquette with his smell, he ought in reason to be
satisfied with less room for himself; but instead of speaking, he
brought out a tobacconist's parcel and began to open it. Tobacco-smoke
is all very well under suitable circumstances, but it is possible to be
too hot and dusty and bilious to be able to stand it, and I watched his
proceedings with more of annoyance than of resignation. The parcel
turned out, however, to be delightful snuff, tastefully perfumed and
very refreshing; and the politeness with which the owner gave a pinch to
the foreign monsieur, after apportioning a handful to the driver and
conductor, won him a good three inches more of seat. The inevitable
cigar soon came; but it was a very good one, and no one could complain:
all the same, I could not help feeling a malicious satisfaction when the
_douaniers_ on the French frontier investigated the spare
boots--guiltless, one might have thought, of anything except the
extremity of age and dirt--and drew from them a bundle or two of
smuggled cigars, the owner trying in vain to look as if he rather liked
it.

The Hotel de Geneve is probably the least objectionable of the hotels
of Annecy; but the Poste-bureau is at the Hotel d'Angleterre, and it
was much too hot for me to fight with the waiters there, and carry off
my knapsack to another house. It is generally a mistake--a great
mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal
of many diligences. All the night through, whips are cracking, bells
jingling, and men are shouting hoarsely or blowing hoarser horns.
Moreover, the Hotel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of
paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had
at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been
torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while
large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the
stairs. The natural _salle-a-manger_ was evidently an excellent room,
with oleander balconies, but it was at pre