All Sorts Of Domestic
Servitors Drift In, Filled With A Morbid Curiosity To See How A
Foreigner Deports Himself When Engaged In This Strange, Barbaric
Rite.
On the occasion of my first bath on French soil, after
several of the hired help had thus called
On me informally, causing
me to cower low in my porcelain retreat, I took advantage of a
moment of comparative quiet to rise drippingly and draw the latch.
I judged the proprietor would be along next, and I was not dressed
for him. The Lady Susanna of whom mention has previously been
made must have stopped at a French hotel at some time of her life.
This helps us to understand why she remained so calm when the
elders happened in.
Even as now practiced, bathing still remains a comparative novelty
in the best French circles, I imagine. I base this presumption
on observations made during a visit to Versailles. I went to
Versailles; I trod with reverent step those historic precincts
adorned with art treasures uncountable, with curios magnificent,
with relics invaluable. I visited the little palace and the big;
I ventured deep into that splendid forest where, in the company
of ladies regarding whom there has been a good deal of talk
subsequently, France's Grandest and Merriest Monarch disported
himself. And I found out what made the Merriest Monarch merry - so
far as I could see, there was not a bathroom on the place. He was
a true Frenchman - was Louis the Fourteenth.
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