French ones,
needless to say, refuse to "settle."
The hotels in the country places, too, would be better. At present they
exist on a system of monopolism and favouritism; it is quite beyond the
ambitions of their managers to collect a clientele; most of these concerns
are palpably run on the following principle: to keep the guest in such a
state of chattering starvation, that he is _ready to eat anything_. How
often have I yearned, in these "Grand Hotels"--they are all _grand
hotels_--for the material comforts and the decent fare of some little
wayside hostelry in Finland, or a rest-house in the jungle of Ceylon!
Why do French travellers not complain oftener?
Well, the Frenchman is a patriotic creature and congenitally kind-hearted;
the proprietors of these establishments are country-people of his; they
are poor devils who have got stranded, somehow or other, in Tunisia; one
must have patience with them. Sometimes, however, your self-respecting
Gaul is strained beyond the point of patriotic endurance by the
concoctions of these Locustas and Borgias; then he unsheathes that
dagger-like Neanderthal manner which he carries about with him for rare
occasions of self-defence; and it warms the cockles of one's heart to hear
how pertinently he discourses damnation to the cringing host.
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