Just as you are getting into the carriage, a chambermaid, not the one who had charge of your room, but her sister, appears with one of your silk handkerchiefs.
“Monsieur forgot the handkerchief.”
She extends the handkerchief with one hand, holding out the other for a franc. You give it to her of course, knowing all the time that your own chambermaid abstracted it and gave it to her for the purpose of wringing the last possible drop of blood out of you, and that this wretch has done the same kind office for your chambermaid, to be practised upon another victim who leaves to-morrow.
I presume the landlord compels a division of these swindles, for as they all lay awake nights to devise ways and means to wrench money from tourists it is not likely they would let so easy a source of revenue escape them.
Here everybody takes gratuities, even excelling the English in the practice.
There is a story which comes in here by way of illustration. An old lady had a case in court which was going slowly. She desired more speed, and asked an old man, who was supposed to know everything, how she could accelerate the matter.
“Give your lawyer twenty francs.”
“What! will the grave and great man take twenty francs? Would he not throw the money in my face and feel so insulted that he would throw up my case?”
“He might, but I can tell you how to know whether he will take the gratuity or not. When you come into his presence observe his mouth. If it runs up and down his face don’t offer it to him, for he would not take it. But if his mouth runs across his face offer it with confidence. Every man in Switzerland whose mouth is cut crosswise the face will accept a gratuity.”
It so happened that in sailing up the lake the question of piracy came up,—it grew out of a discussion of the charges at the various hotels—when Tibbitts broke in with that calm confidence that distinguishes the young man:—