The breakfast was not extraordinarily expensive. But when he looked over his account Mortier went into a rage. He had ordered the same things that we did, and his bill was two dollars and a half, that is about twelve and a half francs, higher than ours. These twelve and a half francs represented the price of a bottle of very ordinary red wine, which he had ordered.
“Do you want me to tell you what your Americans are,” he shouted. “Well, they are, and don’t you forget it either, they are every one thieves, savages, hogs. They are hogs, hogs! That one word expresses it.”
One morning at eight o’clock, after we had had coffee together, he left us.
“I am going to take a little walk,” he said. “I shall be back in half an hour.”
The half hour lasted until seven o’clock in the evening. You can imagine how anxious we became.
This is what happened.
Seeing that everybody, almost without exception, was headed in the same direction, he followed the crowd along the side walk. Presently he found himself on Brooklyn Bridge, black with people and burdened with cars, those bound to New York filled to overflowing, the others returning to Brooklyn completely empty.
Mortier did not know that all Brooklyn goes to work on the New York side, where the business district is situated, and that everybody goes to work at the same hour in this peculiar country. Astonished, curious, a little bewildered, he followed the crowd. Once across the bridge he found himself in one of the innumerable streets of New York.
On the New York side he looked round him to establish a landmark by which he could find his way back. He did not discover one, but it seemed impossible to get lost, as he had only to return to the base of this big bridge to retrace his steps to Brooklyn. He kept on, therefore, until he had completely satisfied his curiosity. Then he retraced his steps, or at least he thought he was doing so. He looked for the bridge, but in vain. Everybody walked so quickly that his very courteous “Pardon, Monsieur,” met with no response. Once or twice he made a bad effort at asking for “Brooklyn Bridge.” This met with no better success.
All the while he was unable to find a policeman.