Without deigning to look at me at all,
she languidly lifted the coin and bit it! - to see if it
was good. Then she turned her back and placidly waddled
to her former roost again, tossing the money into an open
till as she went along. She was victor to the last,
you see.
I have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they
are typical; her manners are the manners of a goodly
number of the Baden-Baden shopkeepers. The shopkeeper
there swindles you if he can, and insults you whether
he succeeds in swindling you or not. The keepers of
baths also take great and patient pains to insult you.
The frowsy woman who sat at the desk in the lobby
of the great Friederichsbad and sold bath tickets,
not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity
to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat
me out of a shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled
her to ten. Baden-Baden's splendid gamblers are gone,
only her microscopic knaves remain.
An English gentleman who had been living there
several years, said:
"If you could disguise your nationality, you would not
find any insolence here. These shopkeepers detest the
English and despise the Americans; they are rude to both,
more especially to ladies of your nationality and mine.
If these go shopping without a gentleman or a man-servant,
they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty insolences
- insolences of manner and tone, rather than word,
though words that are hard to bear are not always wanting.
I know of an instance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back
to an American lady with the remark, snappishly uttered,
'We don't take French money here.' And I know of a case
where an English lady said to one of these shopkeepers,
'Don't you think you ask too much for this article?'
and he replied with the question, 'Do you think you are
obliged to buy it?' However, these people are not impolite
to Russians or Germans. And as to rank, they worship that,
for they have long been used to generals and nobles.
If you wish to see what abysses servility can descend,
present yourself before a Baden-Baden shopkeeper in the
character of a Russian prince."
It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud,
and snobbery, but the baths are good. I spoke with
many people, and they were all agreed in that. I had
the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three years,
but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there,
and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my
rheumatism in Baden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it.
It was little, but it was all I had to give. I would
have preferred to leave something that was catching,
but it was not in my power.
