In America when something is left in front of the door it is only as a sign that the object can be thrown away. Mortier never saw his shoes again.
He rang, a negro presented himself. Mortier demanded his shoes. He cried, stormed, threatened. The negro backed up against the wall and unconcernedly whistled a cakewalk.
Speechless with rage, Mortier hurled himself upon the black. The hotel negroes, especially when they are not armed, are ordinarily lacking in courage. Besides, this one had good reasons for believing that his client had gone mad. So he hastily decamped.
After that nothing could induce any one of the negroes of the establishment to enter Mortier’s room as long as he remained at this hotel.
We did our best to explain to M. Mortier that the domestics were nowise in the wrong. He would not listen to a word, but kept exclaiming, with his eyes sticking further out of his head than usual (his eyes were naturally prominent):
“No, no! In America you are savages, all savages. Yes, savages and thieves. It is much worse here than I had supposed.”
One morning he went down alone into the restaurant for breakfast. Some minutes after we saw him bounding up the stairs. He was livid and trembling with rage. On reaching the door of our apartment, he burst out:
“This time it is too much. What is the matter with these brutes here? Has some change come over me? Tell me. Am I an object of ridicule? What is the matter with me? When I entered the restaurant a great fool looked me over from top to bottom, and said something, thereupon everybody began to stare at me. What is the trouble with me? Tell me what is the matter?”
What was the matter? He wore a straw hat with very narrow brim, one of those hats called “American” in Paris and of a kind that is never worn in America. He also had “New Yorkey” trousers such as were never cut in New York. That was enough to let loose the risibilities of this Yankee public, a public that is far from being indulgent of little eccentricities in other people.
Instead of calming him our explanations exasperated him, and it was only after he had spent his violence that we succeeded in getting him down to breakfast again.