The old Empress, Augusta, when in Baden, used to patronise this very hotel and no other.
They could show me the actual bath, and I myself could have pension (baths excluded) for eight marks and fifty a day.

If I would be so kind as to step into the lift, I should see the room for myself, and then with my permission they would bring in my luggage and pay the cab.
All this by degrees, from a pale youth in frock-coat and forage-cap, and a more prosperous personage with _pince-nez_ and a paunch (yet another concierge and my latest landlord respectively), while I stood making up my mind.

The closing proposition was of some assistance to me.

I had no luggage on the cab, of which the cabman's hat alone was visible, at the bottom of a flight of steps, at the far end of the flagged approach.

I had left my luggage at the station, but I only recollected the fact upon being recalled from a mental forecast of the interview before me to these exceedingly petty preliminaries.
There and then I paid off the cab and found my own way to this Conversationshaus.