d with a
bewitching smile.

"'Plaisir' indeed! Why, I look upon you as a perfect fool, monsieur."
Then she remarked to the General: "I am not going to let you have any
of my money. I must be off to my rooms now, to see what they are like.
Afterwards we will look round a little. Lift me up."

Again the Grandmother was borne aloft and carried down the staircase
amid a perfect bevy of followers--the General walking as though he had
been hit over the head with a cudgel, and De Griers seeming to be
plunged in thought. Endeavouring to be left behind, Mlle. Blanche next
thought better of it, and followed the rest, with the Prince in her
wake. Only the German savant and Madame de Cominges did not leave the
General's apartments.

X

At spas--and, probably, all over Europe--hotel landlords and managers
are guided in their allotment of rooms to visitors, not so much by the
wishes and requirements of those visitors, as by their personal
estimate of the same. It may also be said that these landlords and
managers seldom make a mistake. To the Grandmother, however, our
landlord, for some reason or another, allotted such a sumptuous suite
that he fairly overreached himself; for he assigned her a suite
consisting of four magnificently appointed rooms, with bathroom,
servants' quarters, a separate room for her maid, and so on. In fact,
during the previous week the suite had been occupied by no less a
personage than a Grand Duchess: which circumstance was duly explained
to the new occupant, as an excuse for raising the price of these
apartments. The Grandmother had herself carried--or, rather,
wheeled--through each room in turn, in order that she might subject the
whole to a close and attentive scrutiny; while the landlord--an
elderly, bald-headed man--walked respectfully by her side.

What every one took the Grandmother to be I do not know, but it
appeared, at least, that she was accounted a person not only of great
importance, but also, and still more, of great wealth; and without
delay they entered her in the hotel register as "Madame la Generale,
Princesse de Tarassevitcheva," although she had never been a princess
in her life. Her retinue, her reserved compartment in the train, her
pile of unnecessary trunks, portmanteaux, and strong-boxes, all helped
to increase her prestige; while her wheeled chair, her sharp tone and
voice, her eccentric questions (put with an air of the most overbearing
and unbridled imperiousness), he