LETTER XI
Hotel National, Lucerne
26th August
Darling Elizabeth:
The De Pivarts' Villa
Such a jolly time as we had yesterday! In the morning before lunch Blanche and I clambered up the hill behind the National to call on the De Pivarts. They live in a mite of a box of a villa. It is at the end of a street so steep that you feel as if you were going to pitch head-first down it when you begin to descend. The De Pivarts were not at home, according to a man-servant who came to the door in his shirt sleeves and without a collar, and took our cards in fingers that I am sure had previously been engaged in blacking the Marquis's boots or lighting the kitchen fire. But as we came up the hill we saw a man like the Marquis en déshabille leaning out of the tiny balcony, and we distinctly heard a female exclaim: "Mon Dieu, je suis perdu! Il n'y a pas des Geraudels! Marie, vite, vite, descendez à la ville pour chercher une boîte."
So we knew where the Marquise got her voice from.
In spite of the villa being so high up, the air seemed quite stuffy, for the hill is full of six-francs-a-day pensions, where there are enough Baedekers to start a library, and where they ring ranz des vaches instead of dinner-gongs.