When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye by a young lady of fashionable appearance, who takes a personal interest in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening's _course_ on the lake, or a morning's drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man meditating an ordinary dinner, and assures him that she knows exactly what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I have slowly learned to expect that this fashion and condescension will appear in the bill.

Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case; and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at the Hotel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should certainly try the Hotel de Geneve on any future visit to Annecy.
The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont Parmelan.

I was prepared to find the people of the town denying the existence of such a mountain; but, as it was visible from the door of the hotel, they could not go quite so far as that.

The small crowd at the door repudiated the glacieres with one voice, and pointed out how unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy; nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till at length a lame man passed by, who said monsieur was quite right--he himself knew two glacieres on the Mont Parmelan very well.

He had never seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had.