Nearly All The Hotels In Italy Are Converted Palaces.
They may
have been successes as palaces, but, with their marble floors and
their high ceilings, and their dank, dark corridors, they distinctly
fail to qualify as hotels.
I should have preferred them remaining
unsaved and sinful. I likewise observed a peculiarity common to
hotelkeepers in Italy - they all look like cats. The proprietor
of the converted palace where we stopped in Naples was the very
image of a tomcat we used to own, named Plutarch's Lives, which
was half Maltese and half Mormon. He was a cat that had a fine
carrying voice - though better adapted for concert work than parlor
singing - and a sweetheart in every port. This hotelkeeper might
have been the cat's own brother with clothes on - he had Plute's
roving eye and his bristling whiskers and his sharp white teeth,
and Plute's silent, stealthy tread, and his way of purring softly
until he had won your confidence and then sticking his claw into
you. The only difference was, he stuck you with a bill instead
of a claw.
Another interesting idiosyncrasy of the Italian hotelkeeper is
that he invariably swears to you his town is the only honest town
in Italy, but begs you to beware of the next town which, he assures
you with his hand on the place where his heart would be if he had
a heart, is full of thieves and liars and counterfeit money and
pickpockets. Half of what he tells you is true - the latter half.
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