We reached the hotel before nine o’clock.  Next morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning.  If I remember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there.  It was so high that the ascent was made by ladder.  The huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out.  Five other diligences left at the same time, all full.  We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure, and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the rest of the company were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker, and waited; consequently some of them got their seats for one or two dollars.  Baedeker knows all about hotels, railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely.  He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler.

We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many miles away; then he lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian, and cheap and trivial.

As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman settled himself in his seat and said: 

“Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features of Swiss scenery—­Mont Blanc and the goiter—­now for home!”

CHAPTER XLVII [Queer European Manners]

We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva, that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident.

Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment.  The shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins du Louvre—­an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, and insistence have been reduced to a science.

In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic —­that is another bad feature.  I was looking in at a window at a very pretty string of beads, suitable for a child.  I was only admiring them; I had no use for them; I hardly ever wear beads.  The shopwoman came out and offered them to me for thirty-five francs.  I said it was cheap, but I did not need them.

“Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!”

I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one of my age and simplicity of character.  She darted in and brought them out and tried to force them into my hands, saying: 

“Ah, but only see how lovely they are!  Surely monsieur will take them; monsieur shall have them for thirty francs.  There, I have said it—­it is a loss, but one must live.”