Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Bargaining HE tabte d'hdte was noisy that evening at the Hotel Splendid. The blasting of the hillock and the discovery of the new spring gave a brisk impetus to conversation. The diners were not numerous, however, ? a score all told, ? people usually taciturn and quiet, patients who, after having vainly tried all the well-known waters, v jju na now turned to the new stations. At Vt- the end of the table occupied by the Rave- nels and the Andermatts were, first, the Mone- cus, a little man with white hair and face and his daughter, a very pale, big girl, who sometimes rose up and went out in the middle of a meal, leaving her plate half full; fat M. Aubry-Pasteur, the ex- engineer; the Chaufours, a family in black, who might be met every day in the walks of the park behind a little vehicle which carried their deformed child, and the ladies Paille, mother and daughter, both of them widows, big and strong, strong everywhere, before and behind. You may easily see.said Gontran, that they ate up their husbands; that's how their stomachs got affected. It was, in- deed, for a stomach affection that they had come to the station. Further on, a man of extremely red complexion, brick-colored, M. Riquier, whose digestion was also very indifferent, and then other persons with bad;omplexions, travelers of that mute class who usually enter the dining-rooms of hotels with slow steps, the wife in front, the husband behind, bow as soon as they have passed the door, and then take their seats with a timid and modest air. All the other end of the table was empty, although the plates and the covers were laid there for the guests of the future. Andermatt talked in an animated fashion. He had spent the afternoon chatting with Doctor Latonne, giving vent in a flood of words t...