Jones and I lunched at the Hôtel de France where we found everything very
good. As we were going out, the landlady, getting on towards eighty,
with a bookish nose, pale blue eyes and a Giovanni Bellini’s Loredano
Loredani kind of expression, came up to us and said, in sweetly
apologetic accents:—
“Avez-vous donc déjeuné à peu près selon vos idées, Messieurs?”
It would have been too much for her to suppose that she had been able to
give us a repast that had fully realised our ideals, still she hoped that
these had been, at any rate, adumbrated in the luncheon she had provided.
Dear old thing: of course they had and a great deal more than adumbrated.
[26 December, 1901.]
XVII
Material for a Projected Sequel to _Alps and Sanctuaries_