“I thought,” said Mortier, “that all American buildings were fire-proof.”
“That is what you hear in Paris, but houses of that sort are really very rare.”
“Yet you pay enough in your country to have more comfort and security than anywhere else. For instance, that carriage just now. It was nothing short of robbery. Twenty-five francs to take us from the station here. And such an old trap! I don’t understand why your laws tolerate such things.”
Already he was beginning to protest. There was sure to be something else the next day.
On awakening on the first morning he pressed once on the electric button in his bedroom. A bell-boy appeared, bringing a pitcher of ice water. Thinking this a form of cheap wit Mortier sputtered some of his worst insults, happily couched in French. The bell-boy, a huge negro, looked calmly down upon this excited little man with the fair hair and skin, and then, without asking for his tip, quietly closed the door and went away.
This attitude of unconcern was not calculated to assuage our friend’s bellicose mood. He rang the bell again, and three times instead of once. That was the summons to be made when a guest wanted a boot-black sent to take his boots. Such a personage presented himself.
The personage explained to Mortier that if he touched the bell once that brought ice water; three times a boot-black. But Mortier did not understand a word of English. Accordingly the boot-black did what the bearer of ice water had done before, quite unconcernedly he went away.
Pierre Mortier was in a furious rage when a third boy presented himself, as black as the two preceding, for all the attendants are negroes in American hotels. This fellow was willing to remove his boots. Some minutes passed. Mortier was almost apoplectic with anger. The boy reappeared. He explained to his client that he gave the boots back only in return for a dollar. Mortier was still in bed. To make him understand, the negro lifted his clothes, which were folded on a chair, and, whistling, all the while, rifled the pockets. He picked out a dollar, and put it carelessly into his own pocket. Then he left the boots on the floor and disappeared.
In a paroxysm of rage our friend dressed himself in a great hurry and went to the hotel desk, where he made the place resound with curses that no one paid any attention to since no one understood them.
On the evening of the same day Mortier put his boots outside his door in order that they might be cleaned before next morning, as is done everywhere in England and France.