The Hotel de Geneve is probably the least objectionable of the hotels
of Annecy; but the Poste-bureau is at the Hotel d'Angleterre, and it
was much too hot for me to fight with the waiters there, and carry off
my knapsack to another house. It is generally a mistake--a great
mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal
of many diligences. All the night through, whips are cracking, bells
jingling, and men are shouting hoarsely or blowing hoarser horns.
Moreover, the Hotel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of
paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had
at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been
torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while
large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the
stairs. The natural _salle-a-manger_ was evidently an excellent room,
with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of
joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary
_salle-a-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the
kitchen.
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