The hotel guests slowly entered the dining-room and took their places. The waiters did
not hurry themselves, in order to give the late comers a chance and thus avoid the trouble
of bringing in the dishes a second time. The old bathers, the habitues, whose season was
almost over, glanced, gazed toward the door whenever it opened, to see what new faces
might appear.
This is the principal distraction of watering places. People look forward to the dinner
hour in order to inspect each day's new arrivals, to find out who they are, what they do,
and what they think. We always have a vague desire to meet pleasant people, to make
agreeable acquaintances, perhaps to meet with a love adventure. In this life of elbowings,
unknown strangers assume an extreme importance. Curiosity is aroused, sympathy is
ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is the order of the day.
We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we see people with
different eyes, when we view them through the medium of acquaintanceship at watering
places. We discover in men suddenly, after an hour's chat, in the evening after dinner,
under the trees in the park where the healing spring bubbles up, a high intelligence and
astonishing merits, and a month afterward we have completely forgotten these new
friends, who were so fascinating when we first met them.
Permanent and serious ties are also formed here sooner than anywhere else. People see
each other every day; they become acquainted very quickly, and their affection is tinged
with the sweetness and unrestraint of long-standing intimacies. We cherish in after years
the dear and tender memories of those first hours of friendship, the memory of those first
conversations in which a soul was unveiled, of those first glances which interrogate and
respond to questions and secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet uttered, the
memory of that first cordial confidence, the memory of that delightful sensation of
opening our hearts to those who seem to open theirs to us in return.
And the melancholy of watering places, the monotony of days that are all alike, proves
hourly an incentive to this heart expansion.
Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the appearance of strange
faces.
Only two appeared, but they were very remarkable, a man and a woman-- father and
daughter. They immediately reminded me of some of Edgar Poe's characters; and yet
there was about them a charm, the charm associated with misfortune. I looked upon them
as the victims of fate. The man was very tall and thin, rather stooped, with perfectly white
hair, too white for his comparatively youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearing
and in his person that austerity peculiar to Protestants. The daughter, who was probably
twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, and was also very thin, very pale, and
she had the air of one who was worn out with utter lassitude. We meet people like this
