there isn't much going on, we say, "All right--we'll have it now;"
and we disport ourselves in the corridor, while he works a sort of
transformation in our Gladstone Bag compartment, which seems greatly
to diminish its "containing" capacity. Indeed, if it were not for the
floor, the ceiling, and the walls, one would hardly know where to stow
one's packages. _Le train de Luxe_ I know has come in, of late, for
some abuse, and some grumblers have made a dead set at it. I don't
know what their experience of a _lit de luxe_ may have been, but,
if it was anything like mine, they must have experienced a general
feeling of wanting about a foot more room every way, coupled with a
strong and morbid inclination to kick off roof, sides, back, and, in
fact, everything, so as, somehow, to secure it.

However, the night passed, the unceasing rattle of the train being
occasionally changed for the momentary dead stillness, when it
stopped, as it did now and then, at some small place on the way, for
apparently no better reason than that of pulling the station-master
out of bed to report it. Practically I was undisturbed, except at,
I think, a place called _Delle_, where, in the very small hours of
the morning, a gentleman opened the door of my bedroom _de Luxe_,
and asked me in a voice, in which melancholy and sleep seemed to be
struggling for the mastery, whether "I had any declaration I wished to
make to the Swiss _Douanes_," and on my assuring him that I had "none
whatever," he sadly and silently withdrew.

Nothing further till Basle, where we halted at 6 A.M. for breakfast
and a change of trains, and where I was much impressed with the
carrying power of the local porter, whom I met loaded with the
Dilapidated One's effects, apparently surprised that that "was all" he
was expected to take charge of. Lucerne in a blaze of stifling heat,