In short, by the time you are in France you will have
had pass through your hands one passport and eleven tickets; and the
first thing you will do upon settling down into the French train is to
compete and intrigue to get a twelfth ticket for your lunch. You will
find that this useless ticket will follow you all the way to Geneva
and will always assert itself when you are accosted by a ticket
inspector. I even know a traveller who arrived eventually at the
Swiss frontier with no other paper of identity or justification; for
a passport which should have given his name, address, motive for
travelling, shape of mouth, size of nose and any other peculiarities,
he could only tender documentary evidence of his having eaten the
nineteenth lunch of the first series of the day before.
Two things catch the eye about Geneva. In the first place it is on a
lake, and in the second place it is always brimful of International
Unions, Leagues, Congresses and Conferences. The lake is navigated
in the season by a fleet of sizeable steamers, and one of these, a
two-hundred tonner, used to call every morning of the season at the
little pier outside my house to take me to business, and brought me
back again every evening.
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