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.