and Vienna; accordingly I domicile myself at the hotel for a couple of
days. Many of the lions of Paris are within easy distance of my hotel.
The reader, however, probably knows more about the sights of Paris than
one can possibly find out in two days; therefore I refrain from any
attempt at describing them; but my hotel is worthy of remark.

Among other agreeable and sensible arrangements at the Hotel uu Loiret,
there is no such thing as opening one's room-door from the outside save
with the key; and unless one thoroughly understands this handy peculiarity,
and has his wits about him continually, he is morally certain, sometime
when he is leaving his room, absent-mindedly to shut the door and leave
the key inside. This is, of course, among the first things that happen
to me, and it costs me half a franc and three hours of wretchedness
before I see the interior of my room again. The hotel keeps a rude
skeleton-key on hand, presumably for possible emergencies of this nature;
but in manipulating this uncouth instrument le portier actually locks
the door, and as the skeleton-key is expected to manage the catch only,
and not the lock, this, of course, makes matters infinitely worse. The
keys of every room in the house are next brought into requisition and
tried in succession, but not a key among them all is a duplicate of mine.
What is to be done. Le portier looks as dejected as though Paris was
about to be bombarded, as he goes down and breaks the dreadful news to
le proprietaire. Up comes le proprietaire - avoirdupois three hundred
pounds - sighing like an exhaust-pipe at every step. For fifteen unhappy
minutes the skeleton-key is wriggled and twisted about again in the key-
hole, and the fat proprietaire rubs his bald head impatiently, but all
to no purpose. Each returns to his respective avocation. Impatient to
get at my writing materials, I look up at the iron bars across the fifth-
story windows above, and motion that if they will procure a rope I will
descend from thence and enter the window. They one and all point out